4 




THE 



DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



BY 



THOMAS JAMES SHEPHERD, 

FOURTH PASTOR OF PHILADELPHIA N. L. FIRST PRESBYTERIAN 
CHURCH. 




PHILADELPHIA: 

LINDSAY & BLAKISTON. 
1864. 




Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1864, 

By Lindsay & Blakiston, 

In the Clerk's Office of the District Court of the United States for the 
Eastern District of Pennsylvania. 




CAXTON PRESS OF C. S HERMAN, SON & CO. 



TO THE 



FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 



Xortljcrn £ib*rtics, 



PHILADELPHIA : 



BY THEIR PASTOR. 



PREFACE. 



The month of January, 1864, witnessed 
the semi-centennial anniversary of three 
closely related events in the history of " The 
First Presbyterian Church in the Northern 
Liberties/' namely, the investment of the Con- 
gregation, by the Commonwealth of Penn- 
sylvania, with corporate powers, on the sixth 
day of January, 1814; the installation of the 
first pastor, the Rev. J ames Patterson, on the 
eleventh day; and the formal organization of 
the Church on the twelfth day. 

In commemoration of these events, and in 
testimony to that exceeding grace of God 



viii 



PREFACE. 



which, through fifty years, had been signally 
revealed to the Church and Congregation, the 
present pastor, on the seventeenth and twenty- 
fourth days of January last, preached dis- 
courses which, without change in matter or 
form, but, with additional illustrations in foot- 
notes and in an appendix, appear in the fol- 
lowing pages. 

The publication is made in response to 
urgent request, and in hope of adding some- 
thing to the rapidly accumulating and already 
quite invaluable material of Presbyterian 
Church History. 



CONTEXTS. 



PAGE 

Corpokate Title oe the Cherch. ... 14 

Xortherx Liberties. 15 

Early Times, 17 

Campingtown, . . . . . .19 

Fifty Tears Ago, 21 

Presbyterian Beginnings, ..... 23 
Church Edifice. Second and Coates, . . .25 
Elders of the Forming Congregation, ... 28 
First Pastor : Rev. James Patterson, ... 29 
Earlier Life, . . . ... . .33 

Religious Character, 37 

Intellectual Character, 39 

Personal Appearance, 41 

The City, when he came to it, . . . 43 

Francis Markoe, Esq., 47 

"Week-night Gatherings, . 9 .51 

Sunday-schools, ....... 53 

First Great Revival in 1816 54 

Revival following Revival, 57 

Field Preaching, .59 

Pecuniary Embarrassment of Corporation. . . 61 



x CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

Second Church., Northern Liberties, ... 67 

Third Church, Northern Liberties, ... 69 

Extension of Church Influence, .... 71 
New Church Edifice, . . . . . .73 

Death, 76 

Eesults of Mr. Patterson's Ministry, ... 78 

Second Pastor : Bev. Dr. Carroll, .... 80 

Earlier Life, . . .... 81 

" Qualifications for the Pastorate, .... 83 

Embarrassments, . . . . . .87 

Ending of Pastorate, 91 

Death, . : 93 

Third Pastor: Key. Dr. Ely, . . . . . 94 
Earlier Life, . . . . \ . . .96 

Qualifications for the Pastorate, .... 98 

Ministry, ' .... 101 

Closing Days, 103 

Euneral, . . . , 105 

Fourth Pastor : Bey. Thomas James Shepherd, . 106 

Eleven Years' Work, 109 

Modes of "Warming Church Edifice, .... 121 

Modes oe Lighting Church Edifice, .... 123 

Church Efficiency in Sunday-Schools, . . . 125 

Catalogue of^unday-Schools. 

Coates Street, 127 

Spring Garden, Cohocksink, ..... 128 

Kensington, 129 

Colored, . . . . . . . . . 131 

Nazarene, . 132 



CONTENTS. xi 

PAGE 

Combined Schools : four, ..... 133 
Barton, Hart Lane, Kising Sun, Kace Street, 

Eastburn, 135 

Kirke White, Infant, 136 

Missionary, Marion, Coates Street Colored, 

Union, .' 137 

Penn Hose, Briggsville, ..... 138 

Sunday-School Instruction, 139 

Sunday-School Libraries, . . . . . . 141 

Sunday-School Charities, 143 

Eldership, 144 

Elders Dying in Office. 

John Gourley, 146 

Kobert Sawyer, 147 

Joseph Abbott, 150 

Isaac Will, 152 

Charles Deal, 155 

Perpetuity or Church Life, 159 

The Landscape's Eye, 161 

Responsibility of Individuals, 163 

Shortness of Life's Working Term, . . . 165 

APPENDIX. 

L Charter of the Church, .... . . 167 

II. Trustees of the Corporation, 175 

III. Names of Communicants at organization, . . 180 
IY. Sunday-schools and Superintendents, . . . 181 
Y. Pastors and Elders, 190 



THE 



DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



Ask now of the days that are past. 

Deut. 4 : 32. 



To inquire of the days that are past in re- 
spect to the persons and events of History is 
to experience a peculiar pleasure. It is well 
said by the historian Xiebuhr, u He who calls 
what has vanished back into being, enjoys a 
bliss like that of creating." 

The finished term of fifty years since the 
organization of this Church and the settle- 
ment of its first pastor, is a proper occasion 
to interrogate the past. With ampler mate- 
rial and greater leisure, I might have made 



14 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 



the inquiry more complete and more accept- 
able ; but, I trust that what I have been able 
to achieve will prove not altogether ungrate- 
ful to the members of the Church and Con- 
gregation. 

The corporate title of this Church is " The 
First Presbyterian Church in the North- 
ern Liberties."* This title carries thought 
back to the beginnings of population and of 
Presbyterianism in that large District, , once a 
suburb, now a part of the City of Phila- 
delphia. 

Pew have need to be told that the original 
limits of Philadelphia were the Delaware and 
Schuylkill Rivers, east and west, and Vine 
and Cedar Streets, north and south. Along 
the Delaware, above and below city limits, 
population early began to form. The section 

* See Appendix I. 



NORTHERN LIBERTIES. 



15 



above city limits was commonly designated 
" North End ;" that below city limits, " South 
End," or " Society Hill."* But when the 
growth of population had made municipal 
government a necessity, the suburbs were 
erected into separate municipalities : the sub- 
urb, south, into the municipality of " South- 
wark;" the suburb, north, into the munici- 
pality of "The Northern Liberties." 

The District of the Northern Liberties was 
incorporated in the year 1803, and was con- 
solidated with the City in 1854. At the 
time of its incorporation, its inhabitants 
numbered about sixteen thousand, and its 
compactly built portions had, at no point, a 
greater westward extension than the line of 
Third Street; at the time of its consolida- 
tion, its inhabitants numbered about sixty 
thousand, whilst over its whole area, as de- 



* Watson's Annals. 



16 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

fined by the Delaware, Coliocksink Creek, 
Sixth Street, and Vine Street, spread densely 
crowded buildings, and, beyond it, there 
stretched away the comparatively recent, yet 
rapidly advancing municipalities of Kensing- 
ton, Spring Garden, and Penn Township, 
cities in themselves. 

Of the first appearances of the North End 
no memorials now remain, and few traces of 
what the Liberties were even fifty years ago. 
In early times, from Callowhill Street to the 
Run, which the great sewer under Willow 
Street hides, and which, originally bearing 
the euphonious Indian name Cohoquinoque, 
was subsequently known as Pegg's Run, 
steep descents led down to broad marshes, 
where tide-waters flowed, and occasionally so 
flooded that boats were needed to cross them. 
These marshes, green in the summer with 
coarse grasses and shrubs, and alive with the 



EARLY TIMES. 



17 



birds which sportsmen from the City keenly 
hunted, were first bridged by a long cause- 
way in the line of Front Street. Beyond 
these marshes, as one went northward, the 
firm ground was densely wooded, and was 
cleared for tillage chiefly by two proprietors, 
Daniel Pegg and William Coates. Pegg re- 
sided on his farm; building for himself a 
house which stood on what is now the west 
side of Front Street, a little below Green, 
and which was usually called " The Big Brick 
House at the North End."* 

In later times, and immediately after the 
defeat of General Braddock by the French 
and Indians in the year 1755, the North End 
was the site of barracks built by the British 
Government for troops deemed necessary for 
the City's protection. The ground on which 
these barracks stood was the square lying 



* Watson's Annals. 
2* 



18 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

between Second and Third and Buttonwood 
and Green Streets, and, when chosen for this 
purpose, was a field of luxuriant buckwheat. 
The barracks consisted of brick houses, two 
stories high, with a portico around the whole 
hollow square, and furnished accommodations 
for three thousand men, with their officers.* 
Their location was so remote from town that 
young men and maidens in the City were ac- 
customed, on holiday occasions, to form par- 
ties and to visit the Parade Ground directly 
east of them, under the double incentive of 
witnessing the drill of the soldiers and of 
enjoying a walk to the country. For the 
convenience of soldiers and citizens, another 
long causeway across the marshes of Pegg's 
Run, in the line of Second Street, was built; 
and, facilitating intercourse between the City 
and the North End, was a powerful stimulus 

* Watson's Annals. 



CAMPINGTOWN. 



19 



to the growth of a resident population. It is, 
however, a strong proof of the predominant 
soldier element in the gathering population 
that the town, condensing about the barracks, 
was early named Campingtown, and, in the 
abbreviations, Campington and Camptoiun is 
still familiar to all middle-aged residents of 
the District.* 

In times later still, when the w r ar for Inde- 
pendence had subjected Philadelphia to the 
occupancy of a British army, the barracks at 
Campingtown were not only filled with sol- 
diers but the Cohocksink Creek was dammed, 
to make the flooded meadows a barrier of 

* According to Watson, Campingtown, in times not very 
remote, was well entitled to the designation Fightingtown. 
He says: "The Northern Liberties about Camptown and 
Pegg's Run used to be in agitation almost every Saturday 
night by the regular clans of ' rough and tumble ' fighting 
between the ship-carpenters from Kensington and the butch- 
ers from Spring Garden, — the public authority not even at- 
tempting to hinder them, as it was deemed an affair out of 
town." 



20 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

defence, and the high ground between the 
Delaware and Schuylkill Rivers was strongly 
fortified. One of the six fortifications that 
stretched from river to river, stood on the 
Delaware near the foot of Brown Street ; an- 
other, in an open grass lot on the line of the 
present Second Street immediately east of 
where the first St. John's Methodist Church, 
on St. J ohn Street, stood ; another, on the 
ground where Sixth and Poplar Streets now 
intersect; another, on Bush Hill; another, 
near Fairmount; and the other remaining 
one on Market west of Broad Street ; whilst 
between them all. from one to the other, 
stretched stockades and formidable barriers 
of trees.* 

But these memorials of early and later 
times, with many others that I may not stay 
to mention, have all passed away. The 

* Watson's Annals. 



FIFTY TEARS AGO. '21 

steeps above Peggs Run have become gentle 
slopes ; the marshes along Peggs Run have 
hidden under streets and buildings ; the slug- 
gish waters of Pegg's Run itself have found a 
tunnelled channel-way where sunbeam never 
comes: and the barracks of Cainpingtown. 
and the meadows of Cohocksink. and the forts 
between the rivers, have alike disappeared. 

Xor are we able to detect much that ex- 
isted fifty years ago. From the Delaware to 
Third Street and from Vine Street to Poplar 
Lane, the plat of the District was substan- 
tially what it now is ; but most of the streets 
were unpaved. one half of the buildings were 
of wood, and numerous vacant lots were here 
and there to be seen. The rude beginnings 
of Fourth Street, north of Callowhill. had 
iust become visible, but no traces of Fifth 
and Sixth Streets had appeared. The Old 
York Road was the only highway across the 



22 m THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

commons, and Green Street west of Third 
was a long line of ponds and brick-yards.* 
The houses of worship in the District were 
few and unpretending, most church-goers 
walking to the City, and where these houses 
stood, stand now, with scarcely an exception, 
rows of shops. 

But, turning from the beginnings of popu- 
lation, let me describe the beginnings of 
Presbyterianism in the Northern Liberties. 
When, in the second half of the last century, 
a town began to form in close proximity to 
the barracks, the spiritual wants of its people 
awakened the concern of the Second Presby- 
terian Church in the City worshipping at 
Third and Arch Streets. This Church had 
had its origin in the great revival under Mr. 
Whitefield's ministry, and was distinguished 

* Watson's Annals. 



PRESBYTERIAN BEGINNINGS. 



23 



for zeal in labors to propagate the Gospel. 
Its first pastor, the famous Gilbert Tennent,* 
was as eminent for public spirit as for preach- 
ing talent; and, residing, for the most part, 
at a country place called Bedminster, now 
Fourth and Wood Streets, he displayed that 
interest in the people of the North End which 
brought many of them under his ministra- 
tions. Mr. Tennent, dying in January, 1764, 
one hundred years ago, was succeeded by the 
Rev. Dr. Sproat, who instituted at Camping- 
town regular religious services in a small 
house which the Second Church had provided 
and fitted up for the purpose. f During the 
Revolutionary War, these services were sus- 

* The name Tennent is frequently spelled Tennant. In the 
text, the spelling is that adopted by Webster in his History of 
the Presbyterian Church in America, and by other authori- 
ties. 

j- This house, familiarly called in later times, "The Old 
Cannon House," stood at the northeast corner of St. John and 
Coates Streets. 



24 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

pended, and the house in which they had 
been held was converted into a receptacle for 
military stores.* After the Revolutionary 
War, the project of gathering a congregation 
at Campingtown was revived, but was not 
realized until, with special reference to it, Dr. 
Ashbel Green, in 1783, became the colleague 
of Dr. Sproat. The two pastors made ar- 
rangements for alternate Sabbath services at 
Campingtown and in the City; Dr. Green 
engaging, in addition, to preach at Camping- 
town every Wednesday evening. It illus- 
trates the then condition of the District, that 
after an experiment of six months, the Wed- 
nesday evening service was abandoned, be- 
cause " there was neither a regular pavement 
nor any lamps in that part of the Northern 
Liberties in which the house used for worship 
was situated."f 

* Dr. Green's Autobiography, p. 191- f Ibid., p. 192. 



CHURCH ERECTION. 



25 



At length, the growth of the Campingtown 
congregation demanded better accommoda- 
tions than this small house afforded, and an 
effort was made to build a church. Mr. Wil- 
liam Coates, a large land-owner, made dona- 
tion of the lot on the northwest corner of 
Second and Coates Streets, then open ground, 
and, as was thought, too remote from the City 
to be ever disturbed by the noise of toil and 
traffic. Drs. Green and Janeway, the col- 
legiate pastors ' of the Second Church, and 
that prince of laymen, Robert Ralston, begged 
the money to erect the house, which, built of 
brick, eighty by sixty feet in dimensions, 
without galleries and without a lecture-room, 
yet, according to Dr. Green, " of comely pro- 
portions and modest ornaments," was finished 
in the spring of 1805, and was opened for pub- 
lic worship " on the Lord's Day, April 7th/'* 

* Mr. Isaac Snowden, in a manuscript journal, now in the 

custody of the Presbyterian Historical Society, describes the 

3 



26 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



In this house, religious worship had for 
eight years been statedly held, when, from 

opening of this house for worship. He says : "The service 
of the consecration or solemn dedication of the new Church 
in Campingtown began with a short introductory prayer for 
a blessing by Dr. Green. Then Mr. Bradford read the sixth 
chapter of Second Chronicles, and gave out a hymn. Mr. 
Janeway prayed and gave out the 122d Psalm. 

"Dr. Green preached from 2 Chronicles 6 : 40, 41 : 'Now, 
my God, let, I beseech thee, thine eyes be open, and let thine 
ears be attent unto the prayer that is made in this place. 
Now, therefore, arise, O Lord God, into thy resting-place, 
thou, and the ark of thy strength : let thy priests, O Lord 
God, be clothed with salvation, and let thy saints rejoice in 
goodness.' 

" Evening, Mr. J aneway preached from 1 Kings 8 : 27 : ' But 
will God, indeed, dwell on the earth ? Behold the heaven, 
and the heaven of heavens cannot contain thee ; how much 
less this house that I have builded.' 

"The church was exceedingly crowded both morning and 
evening." 

Dr. Green's sermon was published. In it occurs the follow- 
ing passage: " Sacred edifice ! long the object of my wishes, 
my hopes, my labors, and my prayers, mayst thou never be 
profaned, abused, and polluted by unhallowed lips. May thy 
consecrated walls resound only with evangelical truth. May 
no false doctrine, heresy, or error ever be uttered here ; if it 



CHURCH ORGANIZATION. 



27 



the growth of the District and of the congre- 
gation as well, it was judged expedient to 
take measures for the organization of a church 
and for the settlement of a pastor who. col- 
legiate with the pastors of the Second Church, 
should yet reside in the District and give to 
Presbvterian families there the lone-needed 
oversight. 

shall, let the stone cry out of the wall and let the beam out of the 
timber answer it, and let them confound the wretch who shall 
here attempt to pervert the Word of Life and to beguile un- 
wary souls. Gracious God ! our hope is in Thee alone. Let 
this place ever be the witness only of worship that is pure, 
and of doctrine that is sound : that many sons and daughters, 
through successive ages, when we are mouldering under the 
clods of the valley, may here be born to Thee, and hence be 
translated to the house not made with hands, eternal in the 
heavens."' 

The prayer that truth might be spoken in the dedicated 
house, and that in it many might be born again was signally 
answered : but the house did not stand, as Dr. Green antici- 
pated, --through successive ages." It illustrates man's igno- 
rance of the future and a growing city's changes that Dr. 
Green, who died in ISIS, should himself see the sacred edifice 
he had toiled to rear demolished, and. in its stead, for near a 
score of years, the shops of busy industry. 



28 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

The first movement in this direction was 
the election, by order of Philadelphia Presby- 
tery, and with consent of the Second Church 
Session, of six men, members of the Second 
Church but attendants upon the worship at 
Second and Coates, who should serve as elders 
of the forming congregation. Of the six men, 
elected May 10, 1813, four only consented to 
serve. These four, Samuel Macferran, Joseph 
Abbott, John Gourley, and Thomas White, 
were, on the afternoon of Sabbath, 23d May, 
1813, by the Eev. Dr. Janeway, then sole 
pastor of the Second Church, solemnly or- 
dained and installed.* 

The first care of these Elders of a congre- 
gation, but not of a church, was the secure- 
ment of supplies for the pulpit, with the view 
of finding an acceptable minister. Mr. Rich- 

* Dr. Green, in October, 1812, had entered on the Presi- 
dency of Princeton College. 



FIRST PASTOR. 



29 



ards. Mr. Crane. Mr. Galpin, and Mr. Pat- 
terson were employed, in succession, each a 
month.* The choice of the congregation fell, 
at length, upon the Rev. James Patterson, 
who. at a meeting held Monday, 27th of Sep- 
tember, 1813, and moderated by Rev. Dr. 
Janeway. was elected pastor. 

At an adjourned meeting of Philadelphia 
Presbytery, held Tuesday, 16th November, 
1813, Mr. Patterson, on letters from New 
Brunswick Presbytery, was received as a 
member; the call from "the Congregation of 
the First Presbyterian Church in the North- 
ern Liberties of Philadelphia." was put into 
his hands, and, upon his acceptance of the 
call, order was taken for his installation on 
the second Tuesday of January, 181-4. 

* Of Mr. Richards, nothing is known. In the minutes of 
Assembly for the year 1814, John E. Crane is reported as a 
Licentiate of Jersey Presbytery, and Horace Galpin as a Li- 
centiate of the Presbytery of Xew Brunswick. 

3* 



30 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

Meanwhile, efforts went forward to perfect 
the organization of a Presbyterian Church, 
distinct and separate from the Second Church. 
An application was made to the Session of 
the Second Church by fifty-two persons, com- 
municants in said church but worshippers at 
Second and Coates Streets, to be dismissed 
for the purpose of forming " The First Pres- 
byterian Church in the Northern Liberties." 
An application was also made to the Com- 
monwealth of Pennsylvania by the pew- 
holders in the church edifice at Second and 
Coates Streets to be constituted "a corpora- 
tion and body politic in law and in fact." 
Both applications were granted. The act of 
incorporation was consummated January 6th; 
the formal organization of the Church was 
effected January 12th, 1814.* 

The day preceding the formal organization 

* See Appendix II and III. 



FIRST PASTOR: INSTALLATION. 



31 



of the Church, Mr. Patterson was installed 
into the pastorate. A large congregation 
assembled at 11 o'clock on the morning of 
Tuesday, 11th January, 1814, to witness the 
installation. The Committee of Presbytery, 
consisting of the Rev. Dr. Janeway and the 
Rev. Messrs. Burch* and Joyce,f occupied 
the pulpit, whilst the pastor elect, Mr. Patter- 
son, sat in a slip below. The Rev. Mr. Burch 
presided, proposed the constitutional ques- 
tions and made the installing prayer. The 
Rev. Mr. Joyce preached the sermon, and the 

* The Bev. James K. Burch, a minister of Philadelphia 
Presbytery, was, at the time of Mr. Patterson's installation, 
the pastor of a forming, feeble Church, denominated the Fifth 
Presbyterian Church, of Philadelphia. In the pastorate of 
this Church he was succeeded by Dr. Skinner. 

f The Kev. John Joyce, also a minister of Philadelphia 
Presbytery, was, in 1814, pastor of the Independent Taber- 
nacle Presbyterian Church, then in Kanstead Court, above 
Fourth, between Chestnut and Market Streets. He was from 
England, and labored in Philadelphia with much acceptance 
for some years. 



82 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 



Rev. Dr. Janeway delivered an impressive 
charge, first to the pastor and then to the 
people. The whole service was a solemn and 
tender one ; and when, at the close, the heads 
of families, coming forward to their pastor, 
gave him the right hand, in token of cordial 
reception and affectionate regard, many an 
eye softened in sympathy with the tearful 
emotion that eloquently told the sense of a 
new, eventful responsibility. 

Mr. Patterson, at the time of his installa- 
tion, was in the thirty-fifth year of his age.* 
Born on the 17th of March, 1779, at Ervina, 
Bucks County, near the Delaware, he was, 
while yet a youth, after a season of protracted 
mental suffering, amounting frequently to 
anguish, born again at Strasburg, Franklin 

* In sketching the life and ministry of Mr. Patterson, free 
use has been made of his Memoir, by Kev. Kobert Adair ; of 
Sprague's Annals, fourth volume ; and of the statements of 
Mrs. Patterson, who still survives him. 



FIRST PASTOR: EARLIER LIFE. 33 

County, ill the beautiful Cumberland Valley. 
Devoting himself to the service of God, he 
began with characteristic energy and zeal the 
work of preparation for the ministry. 

With the standing of a consistent Chris- 
tian and of a good scholar, he graduated from 
Jefferson College, Canonsburg, in 1804 ; was 
for some time a classical teacher in Trenton, 
New Jersey; was appointed in 1806, a tutor 
in Princeton College, where, under direction 
of Drs. Smith and Kollock, he studied Theo- 
logy ; and, on Wednesday, the 5th day of Oc- 
tober, 1808, by the Presbytery of New Bruns- 
wick, was licensed to preach the Gospel. 

In June, 1809, he was called to the Church 
of Bound Brook, New Jersey, and was in- 
stalled there, by the Presbytery which licensed 
him, on Wednesday, the 9 th day of August 
following. 

Resigning his charge in June, 1813, and 



34 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

called to Philadelphia at the close of Septem- 
ber in that year, he entered on his pastoral 
work in the Liberties at the opening of 1814, 
when the gloom of war lay thickest on the 
City, and when, from numerous other causes, 
the prospect of success was anything else than 
bright. 

In the midst of a terrible war to-day, we 
can appreciate somewhat the state of public 
feeling, fifty years ago ; but, the circumstances 
of our City now differ so widely from its cir- 
cumstances then, that we cannot possibly con- 
ceive the darkness and depression which 
characterized those times. 

During the present struggle, Philadelphia 
has had an unobstructed access to the sea, 
and a powerful stimulus to her industry. At 
no period of her history, perhaps, have her 
shops been busier, or her warehouses fuller, 



FIRST PASTOR : DISCO URA GEMENTS. 35 

or her manufacturers and merchants more 
prosperous. 

But, far otherwise was it, fifty years ago. 
Then, our harbor was blockaded ; our coast- 
wdse communications cut off; our railroads 
unbuilt, indeed, unthought of; our trade 
almost annihilated; our industry well-nigh 
paralyzed; our currency frightfully deranged; 
our population distressed, disheartened, de- 
spondent. The necessaries of life were dou- 
bled in price ; and, so bitter were the differ- 
ences of political opinion that the intercourse 
of society was constantly checked and the 
peace of households not infrequently broken.* 

A more unpromising time to attempt the 
difficult enterprise of gathering a self-sustain- 
ing congregation could scarcely be imagined ; 
and yet the time was not the sole or the chief 
discouragement Mr. Patterson encountered. 

* See the J ournals of that day. 



36 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

His little band of communicants, fifty-two in 
number, were not able to aid him much. 
Three-fourths of them were females; nine- 
tenths* of them were poor; all of them were 
unaccustomed to work together, and so were 
unpractised, undisciplined, untrained. 

His stated hearers, moreover, were depress- 
ingly few, and, from long dependence on the 
Second Church, were quite indisposed to make 
sustained and steady effort to achieve enlarge- 
ment. 

Besides, his accessible material consisted 
mainly of the population usually found in the 
suburbs of cities, and usually noted for the 
bad pre-eminence of ignorance, poverty, vice, 
crime. Most of the families which, possessed 
of intelligence and wealth, had, from busi- 
ness or other relations, become residents of 
the District, were accustomed to seek, if 
church-goers at all, the more stately edifices, 



FIRST PASTOR: RELIGIOUS CHARACTER. 37 

and the more congenial companionships of 
the City. 

And, as if to make the list of discourage- 
ments overwhelmingly formidable, his only 
place of assembling the people was, despite 
Dr. Green's commendation of it, a large, cold, 
unattractive house of worship, with a ceiling 
so lofty, and withal so arched, that no occupant 
of its pulpit could speak with ease, and few 
occupants of its pews could hear with comfort. 

But Mr. Patterson had some singular quali- 
fications for his new and untried field. Fore- 
most among these qualifications was his reli- 
gious character. His piety was pre-eminently 
trusting and self-sacrificing. He had an un- 
limited confidence in God ; he was ready at 
any moment when duty called to renounce 
ease, money, reputation, health, life, every- 
thing, indeed, which the natural heart so in- 
stinctively clings to. 

4 



88 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



Looking to God in strong, firm faith, he 
was a man of abounding prayer. "He prayed 
on all occasions and over all subjects, and 
with whomsoever he might be. He prayed 
not as a matter of form or of mere duty; but 
he prayed because he loved to pray, and 
because he had faith in a God who hears 
prayer/'* 

Obeying, in the spirit of Christ, the law of 
self-sacrifice, he was a man of untiring bene- 
volence. He had been led to feel that his 
mission and ministry were mainly to the 
poor; that his one, all-comprehensive, all- 
commanding life-work was to lift up the de- 
graded, to enlighten the ignorant, to reclaim 
the vicious, to reform the idle, to train for 
usefulness in time, and for reward in eternity, 
the neglected and the outcast. He was, thus, 
in remarkable degree, the man for his place. 

* Mr. Barnes, in his Commemorative Sermon. 



FIRST PASTOR: INTELLECTUAL CHARACTER. 39 

Nor was lie better qualified for his place by 
his religious than by his intellectual character. 
His mind was original, bold, imaginative, 
powerful, 

His originality was marked. " He thought 
for himself; he thought in his own way."* 
For material of thought or for modes of illus- 
tration, he never depended on others. A 
diligent, devout student of God's word, he 
held and uttered what he believed the Bible 
taught, regardless of what men, living or dead, 
affirmed to the contrary. 

Nor was his boldness a less marked charac- 
teristic than his originality. He was any- 
thing else than a calm, slow, patient thinker. 
He never set himself to investigate truth with 
cautious deliberation, or to track error with 
tedious step, or to besiege intelligence with the 
toilsome approaches of an ail-investing, irre- 

* Mr. Barnes, in his Commemorative Sermon. 



40 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

sistible logic. With the dash and daring of 
an impetuous soldier he bore to men's minds 
principles which they dared not dispute ; and, 
with conceptions the most startling, and 
images the most striking, he stormed, before 
men were aware, the citadel of their hearts. 

He had, too, as we might expect from his 
originality and boldness, an imagination sin- 
gularly fertile. He was inexhaustible in illus- 
tration. He cared little for refinements of 
thought or elegances of phrase, but he sought 
diligently and successfully the strong, the 
arresting, the impressive. Aiming to save 
souls, he accounted no image too plain, and 
no incident too homely if it made the truth 
transparently clear and tellingly effective. 

Hence, he had, in large measure, the royal 
attribute of power. He could, at will, arrest 
the attention of the most thoughtless and 
touch the sensibility of the most hardened. 



FIRST PASTOR: PERSONAL APPEARANCE. 41 



Using ever the simplest, strongest, most 
sinewy, most thoroughly Saxon forms of 
speech, he carried conviction to the dullest 
minds, and terror to the stoutest hearts. He 
was an evangelist of the school of Whitefield 
and Gilbert Tennent ; he was a pastor of the 
school of Baxter and Pay son. Of all the 
men of his time he was, beyond question, the 
best adapted to the peculiar field and the 
special work to which he was called. 

But, in enumerating Mr. Patterson's singu- 
lar qualifications for his place, it must not be 
forgotten that the peculiarities of his heart 
and mind were aided in an extraordinary 
manner by those of his person. Six feet in 
height, and so spare that he looked much 
taller ; with eyes black as the raven's wing, 
and burning at times like coals ; with a com- 
plexion dark but whitened not infrequently 
by the paleness of feeble health ; with features 

4* 



42 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

on which habitually rested a grave, almost a 
sad expression, yet through which, occasion- 
ally, stole a gleam of brightness like sunburst 
through parting clouds; with arms of wide 
sweep and, in "every movement, eloquent of 
thought and passion; with a voice, moreover, 
strangely sweet and subduing in its lower 
tones, startlingly shrill and piercing in its 
higher ; he could never be heard with indif- 
ference, whilst often he would make an over- 
whelming impression. 

Such was the man who, fifty years ago last 
Monday,* was installed the first pastor of this 
Church. At the time of his installation there 
were but five Presbyterian Churches in the 
City proper, and, beside the feeble congrega- 
tion which he took charge of, not one in any 
of the suburban Districts. 

Of the five Churches in the City, three only 

* llth January, 1814. 



PRESBYTERIAN CHURCHES IN THE CITY. 43 

were possessed of any strength in membership 
or means: the First, under the care of Dr. 
James P. Wilson; the Second, under the col- 
league pastorate of Drs. Jane way and Skinner; 
and the Third, absorbed at the time in the 
bitter ecclesiastical controversy connected with 
the settlement of Dr. Ely. 

It will illustrate the appearance of the City 
when Mr. Patterson came to it, if we call to 
mind that the edifice in which the First 
Church and Congregation worshipped stood 
then, in Market Street, between Second and 
Third, immediately east of what was once 
Elbow Lane, now Bank Street. This edifice, 
built in Grecian style, with a noble portico 
supported by four massive columns, was ac- 
counted one of the finest buildings in the 
City* 

Little more than a block away, at the 

* Watson's Annals. 



44 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 



northwest corner of Third and Arch Streets, 
stood the edifice in which the Second Church 
and Congregation worshipped. The house was 
an oblong structure, with the pulpit in the 
west end, with ample galleries on three sides, 
and with pews which, fifty years ago, were 
characterized as models of convenience and 
comfort. ::: 

The edifice in which the Third Church and 
Congregation worshipped, stood where it now 
stands, at the southeast corner of Fourth and 
Pine Streets. What it was a half century 

* See brief notices of the Churches and Meeting Houses of 
Philadelphia, in Christian Observer, 1853, by Paul. 

The notice of the Second Church edifice has respect to its 
appearance half a century ago, not to its appearance as origi- 
nally built. At the first, the pulpit was on the north side, and 
the house was without galleries. About the beginning of this 
century, the dimensions of the building and its interior ar- 
rangements were altered. For particulars, reference may be 
made to the interesting "Communication of Samuel Hazard, 
Esq., to the Board of Trustees of the Second Presbyterian 
Church." 



APPEARANCE OF THE CITY. 45 

ago, may be inferred from what it was when 
the present pastor came to it. In his quarter 
century sermon, two years since, Dr. Brainerd 
describes it as " barn-like in its aspects f as 
" great and dimly lighted ;" as having " high 
galleries and high-backed pews/' but no " vesti- 
bule, and no lecture, Sunday-school, or busi- 
ness rooms." 

Nor will it be less illustrative of the appear- 
ance of the City fifty years since, if we re- 
member that then its compactly built portions 
were chiefly east of Sixth Street. On Chest- 
nut, above Sixth, back from the street, on the 
north side, stood Carpenter's mansion, a fine 
old dwelling, surrounded by trees. At Broad 
and Market, stood a circular, marble edifice, 
which, receiving the waters of the Schuylkill 
from a point near the present Market Street 
bridge, distributed them in limited quantities 
over the City. At Gray's Ferry, a floating 



46 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

bridge gave easy access to Bartram's botanic 
gardens, a resort as much in favor with the 
public then as Fairmount now. The beautiful 
Washington Square, facing which, on the 
south, stands to-day the honored edifice of the 
First Church, was the Potter's Field, the com- 
mon grave-yard of paupers, criminals, and 
strangers.* 

Mr. Patterson began his work in the North- 
ern Liberties by connecting with his Sabbath 
ministrations a system of faithful visitation 
to the families of the District. Going every- 
where, and making everywhere the impres- 
sion that he honestly sought to promote the 
spiritual welfare of the people, he had the 
happiness to see the number and the interest 
of his hearers steadily growing. At the first 
communion after his installation, he admitted 
eleven on profession and seventeen on certifi- 

* Watson's Annals. 



FRANCIS MARKOE, THE EARNEST ELDER. 47 

cate ; at the second communion, thirty on 
profession, and five on certificate. 

Among the five admitted on certificate at 
the second communion was Francis Markoe, 
Esq., who, identifying himself with the Church 
to become one of its elders, was, for six years, 
a most judicious and effective helper. 

Mr. Markoe was an extraordinary man.* 
Born in Santa Cruz and educated at Princeton 
College, New Jersey, he entered on the scenes 
of active manhood, in his native island, gay, 
worldly, wealthy. Spending, with several of 
his relatives, a festive season of some clays at 
a friend's house, and remaining, one morning, 
at home, while the rest of the company went 
abroad upon a pleasure excursion, he repaired 
to the library. His eye fell on a book, the 
title of which would scarcely have been more 

* The facts in the text are drawn chiefly from Dr. Skinner's 
admirable discourse on "The Religious Life of Francis Mar- 
koe, Esq." 



48 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

striking to him, if he had seen it written in 
characters of light on the wall : " The Scho- 
lar armed against the errors of the times ; 
or the truth of Christianity demonstrated." 

The latter words, especially, excited the 
highest interest : The truth of Christianity 
demonstrated. The assertion had the effect 
upon him of something at the same time 
awfully important and perfectly novel. He 
paused upon it, repeated it to himself, and, 
pronouncing the last word over and over, 
soliloquized thus: " Demonstrated ; from de- 
monstro, demonstrare ; is this, indeed, so? 
the truth of Christianity demonstrated, shown 
by unanswerable argument ? Then I ought 
to be a Christian. I must and will be one." 

Thus saying, he opened the volume and 
read ; his mind was completely overpowered. 
" I found the book," he said, " luminous with 
truth from beginning to end." It established 



FRANCIS MARKOE, THE EARNEST ELDER. 49 

the truth of Christianity as a law, a life in 
his inner consciousness. From that hour he 
was a new creature. His friends thought 
him crazed, but his life proved him gloriously 
changed. 

By a series of remarkable providences he 
was led to this City, joined the First Church 
under the pastoral care of Dr. James P. Wil- 
son, the ablest preacher, perhaps, in America, 
and grew with astonishing rapidity in know- 
ledge and in grace. His business leading 
him to become a resident of the Liberties 
about the time of Mr. Patterson's installation, 
he felt constrained, despite the strength of his 
attachment to Dr. Wilson, to render the feeble 
church and the new pastor the aid of his pre- 
sence, experience, knowledge, counsel, labors, 
prayers.* 

* Mr. Markoe was admitted to the communion of the 
church on certificate the seventh day of May, 1814, and on 

5 



50 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 



He entered with entire heartiness into Mr. 
Patterson's plans, spending in visitation what 
time of every day he could redeem from busi- 
ness cares ; giving each night to meetings for 
social prayer ; stimulating the membership ; 
leading the eldership ; and approving himself, 
in every way, an unselfish, laborious, wise, 
true, efficient worker for Christ.* 

The first result of those activities which 
the zealous pastor and the earnest elder origi- 
nated and controlled, was an attendance on 
the Sabbath services too great for the Church 
accommodations. The work of erecting gal- 

the fifteenth day of that same month and year was, by Mr. 
Patterson, ordained an elder and installed into the oflice. 

* One fact of many illustrates the thoughtful and judicious 
character of the man. Placing, at his own expense, in the 
Old Cannon House, a select library for young people, and in- 
viting them to use it, he met them there once a week, for the 
double purpose of directing their reading and of giving them 
Christian counsel. His influence with the young was very 
great. In later life, he was excelled by few as a Bible-class 
teacher. 



WEEK-NIGHT GATHERINGS. 



•51 



leries on three sides of the Church, which, 
before Mr. Patterson's installation had been 
begun, was hurried forward to completion, 
and was finished in early July, 1814, at a cost 
of $1529.20.* 

The opening of these galleries, and the 
crowding into them of many unaccustomed to 
attend a place of worship, made demand for 
still greater activities and yet other plans. 
The demand was nobly met. Every member 
of the Church that could be urged into the 
service became a visitor of the families in the 
District, and a' helper in week-night gather- 
ings for prayer and exhortation. These week- 
night services, held wherever the people could 
be persuaded to attend, and a place for hold- 
ing them could be gotten, were wonderfully 
blessed. 

But, in addition to systematic visitations 

* Manuscript records of the Board of Trustees. 



52 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

and multiplied meetings, an agency was tried, 
altogether novel, but remarkably effective. 
Pained by the number of poor children in 
the District destitute of instruction, and illus- 
trating his characteristic aptitude for de- 
vising expedients to do good, Mr. Patterson 
suggested the gathering of these children 
into some suitable room on the morning 
of the Sabbath, before public worship, and 
the teaching them without cost to read the 
Scriptures. The suggestion was immediately 
acted on. At a meeting held on Monday 
evening, the twenty-fourth day of April, 1815, 
an association was formed of persons willing 
to give instruction purely gratuitous, and dis- 
tinctively religious, and, on the Sabbath follow- 
ing, in the school-room of Mr. White, one of 
the elders, standing on Coates Street, between 
the Church and St. John Street, a Sunday- 
school of more than one hundred children 



SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 



53 



was begun. Some opposition was at first en- 
countered, on the ground that the movement 
was a desecration of holy time, but the voice 
of disapproval was soon lost in the shout of 
achieved success. The Association begun 
thus is still known among us as " The Union 
Sabbath School Association of the First 
Presbyterian Church in the Northern Liber- 
ties."* 

Amid these busy scenes, the year 1816, that 
ever-memorable year in the history of this 
Church, opened. Through the two preceding 
years, there had been showings of the Divine 
power in the conversion of souls, and the 
Church had steadily grown to thrice its ori- 

* This association, instituted 24th April. 1815. obtained from 
the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, on the fourth day of 
February. 1817. a charter of incorporation, and. on the sixth 
day of June, 1840, alterations and amendments of its Consti- 
tution. 

5* 



54 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



ginal number, but now the heavens were 
opened, and the Spirit was poured down as a 
flood. 

The interest began with the appointment 
of a prayer-meeting on Monday evenings, 
for the special purpose of supplicating re- 
vival influences.* These meetings became so 
thronged and so solemn that additional even- 
ings in the week were designated, until, at 
length, every evening was occupied, and 
preaching services were intermingled with 
those of prayer. For nearly ninety succes- 
sive nights these services were protracted, 
with some extravagance it may be, but with 
manifold evidence of a power more than 
man's. 

* The prayer-meeting begun thus on Monday evening has, 
every week since, been held, and has always commanded a 
large attendance. 

In March, 1858, a daily morning prayer-meeting was be- 
gun and is still continued. May the time never come when 
these meetings for prayer shall be abandoned ! 



FIRST GREAT REVIVAL. 



55 



At the outset, some of the cautious church- 
members were troubled and perplexed, among 
whom was Mr. Markoe. He had never wit- 
nessed, had never imagined such scenes. For 
a time he was in doubt as to the character of 
the work. In the subjects of the strange in- 
fluence there were probably some prominent 
excesses of feeling and of action- but the 
fruits of a genuine revival of religion begin- 
ning to appear in the clear, unquestionable, 
and strongly marked conversion of many per- 
sons, he condemned and renounced his hesi- 
tation. With an honesty and nobleness that 
became him well, he arose in the crowded 
church, declared the change in his views, and 
pledged himself, thenceforth, with heart, soul, 
and strength, to enter into the work.* 

As the general result of this year of re- 

* Dr. Skinner's Discourse on the Keligious Life of Francis 
Markoe, Esq. 



56 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

vival, one hundred and ninety-two persons 
made profession of faith in Christ, most of 
whom proved valuable accessions to the 
Church. One of these persons was a young 
man, now the eminent Rev. Dr. Tustin, of 
Washington City ; two of them were faithful 
men whom the Church afterward called to 
the eldership, Isaac Will and Adam H. 
Hinkel. 

It is worth the mention, also, that through- 
out this season of protracted toil and excite- 
ment, Mr. Patterson had no other aid than 
that of his own church-members. One of 
these members, a student of divinity, now the 
Rev. Dr. Cox, of New York, rendered mate- 
rial service and gave promise of the distinc- 
tion which, as preacher and pastor, he subse- 
quently reached. 

The continuous services of this first great 
revival closed with the month of April, but 



REVIVAL FOLLOWING REVIVAL. 



similar services, some part of every year, were 

thenceforward among Mr. Patterson's favorite 

modes of labor. His passion for saving souls 

found in the crowds which such scenes called 

together a powerful stimulus and a grateful 

satisfaction. His abilitv to conduct and con- 

t/ 

trol such meetings was, perhaps, unequalled, 
and his success in them, through a score of 
years, vindicated his high estimate of them. 
He saw revival follow revival. He saw fifty, 
seventy, ninety persons at one time professing 
Christ. He saw young converts going every- 
where throughout the Northern Liberties to 
visit the poor, to hold prayer-meetings, and to 
organize Sunday-schools. He saw, at one 
time, not less than a dozen Sunday-schools 
and more than forty prayer-meetings, in suc- 
cessful operation. He saw the number of 
communicants in his Church rise from fifty- 
two to eleven hundred. He saw, in the 



58 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

twenty-three years of his pastorate, near seven- 
teen hundred souls assume the vows of Chris- 
tians. He saw, in numerous remarkable in- 
stances, that grandest marvel of earth, the 
impure suddenly abjuring vice, and the rude, 
the vile, the abject, steadily rising to the 
gentleness and the goodness which befit the 
skies. 

But the year 1816 is memorable for the 
beginning, not more of protracted daily ser- 
vices in the Church, than of periodic Sabbath 
services, in summer, on the Commons. In- 
duced to make the effort by the throngs of 
Sabbath-breakers in the fields then near his 
Church, Mr. Patterson continued it through 
five successive summers, until great changes 
in the District made the fields somewhat re- 
mote, and failing health, especially, con- 
strained him to desist. At each of these 
services thousands gathered round him, and 



FIELD-PREA CH1NG. 



59 



heard that Gospel which elsewhere they never 
heard. From these services to those in the 
Church, the transition of interested hearers 
would be easy ; and, abundant evidence exists 
that many, who became consistent, earnest 
members, owed their first impressions to the 
field-preacher's pungent appeals. 

During the revival of 1816, the want of a con- 
venient Lecture-room was painfully felt. Upon 
the Church lot, between Second and St. J ohn 
Streets, stood two frame buildings, rented by 
teachers of week-day schools, and occasionally 
used for religious meetings, but both of them 
small, and one of them so decayed as to be well- 
nigh untenantable. It was accordingly pro- 
posed to substitute for them a single building 
of brick, fronting on Coates Street, thirty-two 
by fifty-two feet, and three stories high. The 
first story was to furnish the space for a capa- 
cious Lecture-room; the second and third 



60 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

stories, eligible rooms for week-day and Sun- 
day-schools. 

After various plans to raise means, it was 
resolved to issue interest-paying stock, secured 
by Corporation property. It was believed that 
the revenue from the week-day schools would 
not only pay the interest accruing on this 
stock, but, in a few years, create a fund suffi- 
cient to redeem the stock itself. The stock 
was issued ; and, although its sale was insuffi- 
cient to cover the expense, the building was 
finished in the summer of 1818, at a cost of 
$6158.24.* 

That same summer, in the second story 
room, under control of directors appointed by 
the Congregation, a school, on the Lancaste- 
rian plan, was opened with flattering prospect 
of meeting all expectations in respect to it; 



* Manuscript records of the Board of Trustees. 



PECUNIARY EMBARRASSMENT. 



61 



but it proved unsuccessful, and, in less than a 
year, was abandoned. 

Meanwhile, provision must be made for pay- 
ing the interest and for satisfying such stock- 
holders as were restless from apprehended 
difficulty in redeeming the stock. The resort 
was to loans on bond and mortgage. The 
liabilities thus created, in addition to liabili- 
ties before existing, made a debt which, de- 
spite all effort to extinguish or reduce, slowly, 
yet steadily increased, and became at length 
so formidable as to threaten the corporation 
with financial ruin.* 

* The sources of this debt, so far as can be gathered from 
the records of the Board of Trustees, were the following: 

1. Pecuniary consideration to the Corporation of Second 
Presbyterian Church for transfer of property at Second and 
Coates as per agreement at the separation. 

2. Erection of galleries in the Church. 

3. School-house stock. 

4. Purchase of burial lot on Shaekamaxon Street, Kensing- 
ton. 

5. Pew-rental arrearages, which, accounted good and made 
the basis of temporary loans, were never realized. ^ 

6 



62 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

I need not go into details. It is enough to 
refer to the matter, and to express an un- 
qualified admiration, not more of the patience 
and toil with which, for years, the Trustees 
addressed themselves to their task, than of 
the repeated and very signal interpositions 
of a Divine, benignant Providence. 

In the spring of 1829, after ten years of 
ceaseless struggle with embarrassments which 
every year augmented, it was resolved to dis- 
pose of the entire property at Second and 
Coates, and to seek another more westward 
location. Many reasons conspired to urge this. 
In the quarter of a century since the Church 
was built, the Liberties had rapidly advanced 
in population, and Second Street had become 
a leading thoroughfare of travel and of traffic. 
The dwelling-houses along Second Street were 
fast changing into places of business; the 
families once residing there were occupants of 



CHANGE OF LOCATION. 63 

homes in newer sections of the District. 
Hence, it was judged that from the apprecia- 
tion in value of the Church property, suffi- 
cient means might be realized, not only to ex- 
tinguish the debt of the corporation, but also 
to erect, without debt, a more commodious, 
more comfortable, more attractive house of 
worship, on a site more convenient to the 
majority of worshippers, and, because of re- 
moteness from the noise and confusion of a 
crowded street, more suitable to the uses of 
worship. Besides, the Church edifice at Se- 
cond and Coates was in such a state of decay, 
that large expenditure in repairs must soon of 
necessity be made if the Congregation were to 
remain there. 

The question of remaining or removing was 
thus under earnest discussion, when a builder 
proposed "to erect a Meeting-House on a lot 
of ground situate on the west side of Fifth 



64 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

Street^ between Tammany and Green Streets, 
containing ninety-six feet front on Old York 
Road, by one hundred feet deep." The size 
of the Church edifice was to be eighty by sixty 
feet; its plan, that of the edifice then build- 
ing on the northeast corner of Twelfth and 
Walnut Streets; its external walls, rough- 
cast, in imitation of marble ; and its basement 
story finished for Lecture and Sunday-school 
rooms. 

The builder engaged to complete the house 
within two years from the date of signing the 
contract, and, when completed, to convey it 
with the ground, clear of all incumbrances, in 
consideration of the conveyance to him by the 
corporation, of all their property on Coates 
Street, between Second and St. John, with 
whatever incumbrances were on said property 
at the date of his proposal. 

The Congregation accepted the terms, and 



DIFFERENCE RESPECTING SITE. 



65 



the Board of Trustees appointed a committee 
u to inspect and supervise the building of the 
Church." It was subsequently ascertained, 
however, that the builder had made an assign- 
ment of his property and business, and that 
the lot where he proposed to build was 
twenty-one feet six inches less in the rear, 
and otherwise different from what had been 
represented. Thereupon, the Congregation 
rescinded their acceptance of the builder's 
proposition, and directed the Trustees to sell 
their property, to discharge the debts of the 
corporation, to purchase a convenient site for 
a new Church edifice, and to build one similar 
to that which had already been agreed on, 
without delay.* 

But, in selecting the site, such differences 
of opinion arose among the Trustees, as led 

* Manuscript records of the Board of Trustees. 
6* 



G6 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

ultimately to the building of three houses of 
worship instead of one ; namely, that in which 
we are now assembled ; that in Sixth Street, 
above Green; and that in Coates Street, 
below Fourth. 

When we recollect that, at the time the 
question of removal to another site was agi- 
tated, the communion of this Church num- 
bered more than one thousand persons, 
scattered over a large and rapidly growing 
District, we cannot wonder that Christian 
men should differ in regard to the best loca- 
tion of the proposed edifice, or that they 
should make this difference the honest occa- 
sion of earnest endeavors to promote Church 
extension. Previous to this time, two efforts 
had been made to establish "The Second 
Presbyterian Church in the Northern Liber- 
ties;" but, as the first had proved a failure, 
and the second an indifferent success, other 



SECOND CHURCH, NORTHERN LIBERTIES. 67 

efforts were thought to be needed, if not, in- 
deed, demanded. 

The first effort was made as early as No- 
vember, 1818, by the Rev. James K. Burch, 
who organized into a Church, with one elder, 
a number of persons dismissed from the Fifth 
Presbyterian Church in the City, and who, in 
April, 1819, secured from Philadelphia Pres- 
bytery a recognition of the Church. After 
a feeble struggle of some two years, the effort 
was relinquished, and the Church became ex- 
tinct. 

The second effort, with better promise, was 
made by one hundred and four persons, peti- 
tioning Philadelphia Presbytery, in April, 
1825, to organize a Church. The Presbytery, 
in granting the prayer, appointed the Rev. 
Dr. Green and the Rev. Messrs. Patterson and 
Alexander Henry, a committee to effect the 
organization, " under such style as may be 



68 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

agreed on by the petitioners and the Com- 
mittee."* In October of that year, the Com- 
mittee reported to Presbytery that they had 
" organized a Church, to be known by the 
name of the Second Presbyterian Church in 
the Northern Liberties. "f The Church was 
taken under care of Presbytery, and pre- 
sented a call for the pastoral services of Mr. 
James Smith, a licentiate of the Presbytery 
of Carlisle. In November following, Mr. 
Smith was ordained and installed, taking the 
oversight of a little band of twelve communi- 
cants, and beginning his ministry in Commis- 
sioners' Hall, Third Street. After five years 
of exhausting toils, the feeble Church, number- 
ing twenty communicants, w T ere encouraged to 
undertake the erection of an edifice in Sixth 
Street, above Green. They succeeded in 
putting the house under roof, and in fitting 

• x " Minutes of Philadelphia Presbytery. f Ibid. 



THIRD CHURCH, XORTHERX LIBERTIES. 69 

up the basement for Sabbath worship, when 
debts, beyond their ability to liquidate, ar- 
rested the work, and threatened the utter loss 
of what they had already expended. 

The Second Church were in these trying 
circumstances, when thirty-eight communi- 
cants in the First Church, differing from their 
brethren on the question of church site, and 
believing that they had an independent work 
to do for the Master, asked to be dismissed, 
that they might constitute "The Third Pres- 
byterian Church in the Northern Liberties."* 
Dismissed, and regularly organized into a 
Church, they met for worship, conducted by 
the Rev. Hugh M. Koontz, in a school-room 
back of Mr. John Dickerson's residence, Pop- 
lar Street, above Second. 

After an interval of some few months, ne- 
gotiations for union between the Second and 

* Minutes of Session. 



70 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

Third Churches were begun and consummated. 
The plan of union involved the junction of 
the two Churches, under the name of u The 
First Presbyterian Church of Penn Town- 
ship;" the completion of the building by the 
Third Church ; the resignation of the pas- 
torate of the Second Church by the Rev. 
Mr. Smith; and the election of the Rev. Mr. 
Koontz to the pastorate of the united Church. 
The unfinished building was urged forward to 
completion; but, before its occupancy by the 
Congregation, differences unhappily arose, and 
severed the communion into two nearly equal 
parts. The one part, by common consent, 
retained the house, the pastor, and the name; 
the other part, denominating themselves u The 
Central Presbyterian Church in the Northern 
Liberties," returned to the school-room on 
Poplar Street, took instant measures for the 
erection of a Church edifice on Coates Street, 



EXTENSION OF CHURCH INFLUENCE. 71 

below Fourth, and elected to the pastorate the 
Rev. William H. Burroughs.* 

Thus, at the time this Congregation was 
about to remove from ground as sacred in the 
estimation of many as the spot where an- 
ciently stood the bush that burned vet was 
not consumed, there sprang into vigorous life 
two closely related Churches, which, in the 
term of a single generation, have rendered 
effective service to the cause of Christ, and 
which, through coming generations, bid fair 
to show a like effectiveness. We account 
their history a part of ours : we esteem their 
faith and order, their energy and zeal, their 
activity and success so many strong incen- 
tives to yield our covenant God the hearty 
tribute of praise. 

* The ministry of 3Ir. Burroughs in the Central Church 
was very brief. Beginning his labors in Commissioners' 
Hall. Third Street, he was compelled by hemorrhage to resign 
his charge before a year had passed, and before the completion 
of the new house of worship. He soon after deceased. 



72 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



But, resuming the narrative of events con- 
nected with the change of Church site, I go on 
to say that, on the 13th of March, 1832, the 
Committee having the matter in charge, re- 
ported to the Board of Trustees that they 
had " purchased a lot of ground situated on 
the south side of Buttonwood Street, between 
Fifth and Sixth Streets, ninety-two feet four 
inches front on Buttonwood Street by about 
one hundred and fifty feet deep, for the sum 
of $8000." On the 8th of May following, 
the Trustees accepted the proposal of Mr. A. 
D. Caldwell " to build the Church agreeably to 
specification," requiring a house similar in size, 
plan and finish to the edifice at Twelfth and 
Walnut, for the sum of $11,500, with privilege 
of using in the new building what material in 
the old should be found serviceable.* 

* The Trustees composing the Building Committee of the 
new Church were Messrs. Fenton, Hinkel, Will, Keim, 
Magee (Hugh S.), and Stout. 



NE W CHURCH EDIFICE. 



73 



Soon the old Church, endeared to thou- 
sands by many tender recollections, and sig- 
nalized by repeated, extraordinary effusions 
of the Holy Spirit, disappeared from view, 
and the new Church, on another and compa- 
ratively remote site, began to rise. Until the 
opening of the Lecture-room in the new 
Church, on Sabbath, the sixteenth day of 
December, 1832. the Congregation worshipped 
in their Lecture-room on Coates Street.* 

As an illustration of what the locality 
where we now are was, thirty years ago, it 
may be mentioned that Buttonwood Street, 
late Buttonwood Lane, had neither pavements 

* The building erected in the year 1818 for Lecture and 
School-rooms, is still standing. After its sale, it was appro- 
priated to various uses : sometimes to business needs : some- 
times to Sunday-school purposes ; and sometimes to theatrical 
shows. It is now used for ware-rooms. It is related that a 
theatre manager, losing a fortune in the vain effort to make 
the Lecture-room an attractive place of amusement, aban- 
doned it. saying, "Too much prayer had been made in it to 
allow its successful conversion into a playhouse." 



74 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



upon it nor water-pipes beneath it.* Before 
the Church, were open lots ; behind it, were 
grave-yards, entered from Noble Street. 

The audience-room of the Church edifice 
was opened for Divine worship on Sabbath, 
12th May, 1833. The service of dedication 
was wholly performed by Mr. Patterson, and 
was one of unusual solemnity.^ A very large 

* Manuscript records of the Board of Trustees. 

f In the "Philadelphian" of 16th May, 1833, "A Stranger" 
gives his impressions of the new church edifice and of the 
opening service, thus : 

"The house is most pleasantly located, having some open 
space on each side, so that they can never be deprived of a 
good current of air. The interior of the house is partly ori- 
ginal, differing from anything I have ever seen. The centre- 
piece of the ceiling (from which is suspended an elegant chan- 
delier) is a most beautiful design, and greatly improves the 
appearance of the house. The pulpit is mahogany, and alto- 
gether different from anything of the kind I have ever seen. 
Its lamps are of an entirely new pattern and very rich. In- 
deed, as I at first intimated, the whole appearance is that of 
neatness, convenience, and comfort. The Rev. Mr. Patterson 
performed his part with much solemnity and propriety. His 
subject was very fitly chosen, and appeared to give great satis- 
faction to a large and attentive audience." 



DEDICATION. 75 

Congregation crowded the house in every part 
and manifested a profound sense of the Divine 
Presence. It was an occasion of special inte- 
rest to Mr. Patterson himself, for, before the 
completion of the house, and whilst the Con- 
gregation were worshipping in the Lecture- 
room, a revival of great power had conse- 
crated, as his devout mind felt, the very 
beams in the wall to the worship of Jehovah. 
Nor may we doubt that the glory of the Lord, 
if not visibly, was really present. That glory, 
filling then the house, has at no time since 
departed. What multitudes within these 
walls have turned from sin to holiness, from 
death to life ! What multitudes have here 
found a Bethel ! What multitudes have gone 
from the assembly here " to the General As- 
sembly and Church of the first born which 
are written in Heaven !" 

But the labors of the honored pastor who 



76 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

came with the flock into this fold, and who 
here, as everywhere, " ceased not to warn 
every one, night and day, with tears," were 
drawing to a close. For three and a half 
years he stood in this pulpit, and then " was 
not, for God took him." He died as gently 
as an infant sinks to sleep in its mother s 
arms, Friday morning, November 17, 1837, 
in the fifty-ninth year of his age, the twenty- 
ninth of his ministry, and the twenty-fourth 
of his pastorate in this Congregation. 

His death awakened general interest 
throughout the City. Fifty clergymen, and 
from eight to ten thousand people, came to his 
burial, on the Tuesday following his decease. 
This house, draped with black, was literally 
a place of weeping. In the solemn funeral 
service, the Rev. Dr. Brainerd read the nine- 
tieth Psalm; the Rev. Albert Barnes gave 
out the hymn beginning "Hear what the 



FIRST PASTORS DEATH. 77 

voice from Heaven proclaims;" the Rev. John 
L. Grant made the address, outlining the 
character of the deceased, and detailing the 
events of his life ; and the Rev. Albert Jud- 
son offered prayer. 

At the close of the service, when the body 
was placed in the vestibule, and the pale, cold 
features of the man of God were uncovered 
for the last time, before the grave should hide 
them forever, the numbers passing his coffin 
were so great that darkness came to arrest the 
interment. His remains, through the night, 
were guarded by Church officers; and, at sun- 
rise the next day, were reverently laid down 
in the vault built expressly for them. 

On the Sabbath following his burial, a ser- 
mon, commemorative of the godly man and 
the faithful minister, was preached in this 
house, by the Rev. Albert Barnes. 

In reviewing the ministry of Mr. Patterson, 

7* 



78 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 



we are struck by its ascertained results. How 
few the men who have ever made his record : 
near seventeen hundred communicants in 
twenty-three years, added to a single pastoral 
charge, or an average of seventy-four a year ; 
sixty young men introduced into the ministry ; 
thousands of children instructed gratuitously 
in Sunday-schools ; tens of thousands of im- 
mortal ones warned, counselled, exhorted, en- 
treated, in the fields, in the streets, in the 
places of prayer. 

Nor were the results of his ministry con- 
fined to a purely spiritual realm. Mr. Pat- 
terson did more for the material prosperity of 
the Northern Liberties, as the Rev. George 
Chandler did for Kensington,* than any score 

* The Kev. George Chandler was installed pastor of Ken- 
sington First Church, 15th November, 1815. He began his 
work, with a feeble society of nine communicants, in a small 
building on Palmer Street ; he ended it, after forty-five years 
of successful labor, by introducing near one thousand church- 



FIRST PASTOR'S MINISTRY. 



79 



of men who ever resided in the District. 
He caused, under God, a revolution in the 
social and religious condition of the people. 
Arousing intelligence, stimulating thought, 
quickening conscience, prompting industry, 
elevating effort, securing thrift, he infused a 
new life into a vast community, and brought 
competence and comfort to multitudes.* 

members into a new, large, and tasteful house of worship on 
Girard Avenue. Between himself and Mr. Patterson a strong 
sympathy existed. Each lived to promote revivals ; each, in 
his District, wielded influences pre-eminently formative ; each 
achieved results which, in material and moral grandeur, have 
seldom been surpassed by individual effort. 

* Among 3Ir. Patterson's numerous plans of promoting in- 
telligence and worth of character was that of a "Religious 
Reading Society.'' The Constitution of this Society, now in 
my possession, provides that its officers "shall be male com- 
municating members in the First Presbyterian Church in the 
Northern Liberties, of Philadelphia;" that its members shall 
be all who will pay annually, in aid of its funds, one dollar 
each ; and that its funds shall be invested in such books, pe- 
riodicals, and papers as the Society may elect. Among the 
papers ordered, as appears from the Society's minutes, I 
notice the Boston Panoplist, the Boston Recorder, the New 



80 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 



If the dwellers in the Liberties should rear 
to his memory a monument of brass or mar- 
ble, as the dwellers in Kensington have reared 
a monument to the memory of Mr. Chandler, 
they would honor not so much him as them- 
selves. His monument is the District itself ; 
his memorial, wdiat we see now in contrast 
with what he saw, fifty years ago. Through 
agencies which he devised and directed, an 
insignificant, unattractive, undesirable suburb 
has become a fair, free, favored City. 

After an interval of a year, the pastorate 
of this Church was filled by the Rev. Daniel 
Lykn" Carroll, D.D., who at a congregational 
meeting held Monday, 23d July, 1838, was 
unanimously elected, and by Philadelphia 
Third Presbytery, on Thursday evening, the 

Haven Religious Intelligencer ; among the books purchased, 
Buck's Theological Dictionary and Brown's Dictionary of the 
Bible. Mr. Patterson was its president and William H. Cow- 
perthwait its secretary. It was begun in 1818. 



SECOND PASTOR: INSTALLATION. 



81 



first clay of November following, was duly in- 
stalled. At the service of installation, the 
Kev. Eliakim Phelps presided, and proposed 
the constitutional questions; the Rev. Wil- 
liam Sterling preached the sermon ; the Rev. 
Thomas T. Waterman delivered the charge to 
the pastor; and the Rev. Anson Rood the 
charge to the people.* The occasion is de- 
scribed as one of deep and solemn interest. 

Dr. Carroll, at the time of his installation, 
was in the forty-second year of his age.t 
Born on the tenth of May, 1797, in Payette 
County, Pennsylvania, he was, like his la- 
mented predecessor, Mr. Patterson, a son of 

* Of the ministers officiating in the service of installation, 
the Eev. E. Phelps was Secretary of the Philadelphia Educa- 
tion Society ; the Rev. William Sterling was pastor of Read- 
ing Eirst Church; the Rev. Thomas T. Waterman was pastor 
of Philadelphia Eifth Church, Arch above Tenth; and the 
Rev. Anson Rood was pastor of the Northern Liberties Cen- 
tral Church. 

f The facts in Dr. Carroll's Life are gleaned from Sprague's 
Annals, chiefly. 



82 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

Scotch-Irish^ Presbyterian parents ; an earn- 
est Christian while yet a youth ; and an ho- 
nored Alumnus of Jefferson College, where 
he graduated in the year 1823. 

His earliest aspirations, which change of 
heart but strengthened, were for the pulpit ; 
and, after his graduation from College, he en- 
tered the Theological Seminary at Princeton, 
went through the whole course of three years, 
and tarried there for study six months longer. 
Licensed to preach the Gospel by the Presby- 
tery of New Brunswick, Friday, 6th October, 
1826, he spent some time in missionary work ; 
but, receiving a unanimous call to Litchfield, 
Conn., he was ordained and installed in the 
month of October, 1827. 

His health, however, was unequal to the 
rigor of the climate and the labor of his pas- 
torate. He was compelled to resign his charge, 
and, amidst the regrets of an attached people, 



SECOND PASTOR: EARLIER LIFE. 83 

was dismissed the fourth clay of March, 1829. 
He was immediately called to the First Pres- 
byterian Church in Brooklyn, where, with 
great acceptance and usefulness, he labored 
till June, 1835, when a threatening affection 
of his throat constrained him to retire for a 
time from the pastoral work. 

He was, soon after, invited to the Presi- 
dency of Hampden Sidney College, in Virgi- 
nia, and was inducted into office in the month 
of September following. About this time, he 
received from the University of New York 
City the honorary degree of Doctor of Divi- 
nity. His connection with the College lasted 
three years, or until his return to the active 
duties of the ministry, by accepting the call 
from this Church, in the autumn of 1838. 

Dr. Carroll was largely endowed by nature 
and grace with the qualities which give suc- 
cess to the preacher and pastor. In person 



84 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

he was tall, slender, yet symmetrically formed. 
He had a complexion rather dark; an eye 
singularly fine and expressive ; a countenance 
that easily took on a winning smile, or 
brightened into a glow of animation ; and a 
voice, withal, of great compass and melody, 
modulated ever with an exquisite taste. In 
manners he was uncommonly bland, graceful, 
fascinating. He had the rare faculty of 
making himself equally agreeable to people of 
all ages and of all ranks. 

In native intellect and studious culture, he 
was undoubtedly superior to most men. He 
had in ample measure the intuitive power of 
reason, and the imperial power of imagi- 
nation. In College and in Seminary he stu- 
died hard, too hard, indeed, for his physical 
strength, yet so successfully as to gift the 
workings of his mind with a prodigious force. 

In sensibility, moreover, he was quick, 



SECOND PASTOR: QUALIFICATIONS. 85 

subtle, strong. He had a nervous organiza- 
tion, which, perhaps, was too highly strung 
for the world's rough ways, but which made 
him keenly susceptible of affection, and en- 
thusiastically ardent in attachment. 

He was, too, in executive talent, a more 
than ordinary man. He had the disposition 
as well as the ability to labor. He wrought 
his sermons with painstaking fidelity, and 
with disciplined skill. He gave himself to 
the work of the ministry with a zeal and self- 
forgetfulness that revealed not more the sense 
of religious responsibility than the spirit of 
indomitable energy. 

And all these qualities, native and acquired, 
were under the control of a profoundly scrip- 
tural and eminently conservative piety. He 
loved truth, and sought it ever with an inex- 
tinguishable thirst. He loved the souls of 
men, and, so long as strength lasted, sought 

8 



86 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

their salvation with an indefatigable earnest- 
ness. He was, in a word, a noble example of 
the Christian man and the cultivated minister. 

Dr. Carroll began his ministry here in cii 
cumstances different from those which sur- 
rounded Mr. Patterson, but scarcely less em- 
barrassing. Mr. Patterson came to Philadel- 
phia when the gloom of war and the strife of 
politics filled the very air with darkness and 
distrust; Dr. Carroll came to Philadelphia 
when ecclesiastical conflicts of long continu- 
ance were just culminating in the disruption of 
the great Presbyterian body. The few Presby- 
terian Churches which Mr. Patterson found in 
Philadelphia had, during his life, grown five- 
fold, but their growth in number and strength 
had only added to the breadth and bitterness 
of the contest which Dr. Carroll encountered. 

I have no purpose and no heart to sketch 
the contentions of those sad times, when two 



SECOND PASTOR: EMBARRASSMENTS. 87 



denominations were eliminating their elements 
from the fragments of Christ's rent body, but 
I simply design to state, in a sentence, as 
matter of history, Dr. Carroll's position. Be- 
lieving that the so-called New School were 
substantially right in the questions at issue, 
and sympathizing in this with the first pastor 
of this Church, he fully espoused and firmly 
maintained their cause. What embarrass- 
ments such position subjected him to we may 
well imagine, when remembering that Phila- 
delphia had been, for years, the scene of the 
strife, and was, in 1838, the forum in which 
the legal right of every Presbyterian Congre- 
gation in the land, to hold and use its own 
house of worship, was about to receive judicial 
determination.* 

* In October, 1838, the great Presbyterian Church case was 
pending in the Supreme Court of Pennsylvania for the East- 
ern District. The Hon. James Todd, the first on the list of 
relators in this case, was a member of the Church over which 



88 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



But ecclesiastical embarrassments were not 
the chief ones confronting Dr. Carroll at the 
time of his installation. There are here to- 
day those who recall with painful memories 
the great monetary crash of 1837, and the 
consequent fearful prostration of all industrial 
interests. The business of the whole country, 
enormously expanded by reckless speculation 
and excessive overtrading, was so seriously 
deranged by sudden contractions and expan- 
sions of the currency, as to be brought, in the 
moment of collapse and panic, to the verge of 
utter ruin. Fortunes were lost in a day. 
Families sank from competence and comfort 
to destitution and distress. 

Dr. Carroll was installed. The trial of the case began, 4th 
March, 1839, before Hon. Molton C. Kogers, at Nisi Prius, 
and a special jury ; it occupied twenty days. For full parti- 
culars, see McElroy's Keport and Dr. Judd's History of the 
Division of the Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
America. 



SECOND PASTOR: EMBARRASSMENTS. 89 

By such a wide-spread social convulsion, 
all Congregations were, of necessity, much 
affected ; but this Congregation, for the second 
time in its history, was well-nigh wrecked. 
It will be remembered that when the re- 
moval from Second and Coates to some other 
locality was agitated, it was believed and 
hoped that thus all financial difficulties would 
be easily surmounted. But when the removal 
was actually effected, through various causes, 
chief among which was the failure to realize 
from the sale of the Church property what 
had been confidently expected, this desirable 
result was not reached. A debt, not so large, 
indeed, as the old one, but quite too large for 
troublous times, was, with the Congregation 
itself, transferred to the new house of worship. 
This debt was not embarrassing so long as 
money could be readily borrowed; but when, 
as in 1838, no money at all could be borrowed, 

8* 



93 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

and the payment of what had been previously 
loaned was peremptorily demanded, it became 
a burden, mountain-like in weight. 

How the corporation survived the pressure 
is matter of marvel. A benignant Providence 
revealed itself, once more, in signal interpo- 
sition.^ Unexpected sources of relief were 
opened ; energetic measures were adopted ; 
and, after a time of struggle and suspense, 
the crisis of peril was safely passed. 

Dr. Carroll's pastorate, beginning thus in 
embarrassment, had yet in progress very ma- 
nifest tokens of Divine favor. Every year, 
valuable accessions were made to the commu- 
nion, both on profession and on certificate. 
The years 1840 and 1843 were years of re- 
vival. In 1840, sixty-four persons professed 
publicly their faith in Christ; in 1843, se- 
venty. The whole number of additions to 
the Church during his ministry was two hun- 



ENDING OF PASTORATE. 



91 



drecl and fifty-nine, or an average of forty- 
eight a year. 

Dr. Carroll's pastorate proved to be a brief 
one. Beginning in October, 1838, and ending 
in February, 1844, it extended only through 
five years and four months. Feeble health, 
which not infrequently before had arrested 
him in the work of the ministry, came again 
to do its office. He struggled with it bravely, 
but vainly. Finding it impossible to meet 
the requisitions of his charge, he asked the 
Congregation to unite with him in requesting 
Presbytery to dissolve the pastoral relation. 
With great reluctance and strong expressions 
of attachment, the Congregation yielded to 
his desire ; and, at a called meeting of Phila- 
delphia Third Presbytery, held in the Lec- 
ture-room of this Church, on the ninth day of 
February, 1844, he was released from the 
connection.* 

* Records of Philadelphia Third Presbytery. 



92 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

Dr. Carroll's pastorate in this Church was 
his last. The remainder of his life, a period 
of seven years and ten months, was a pro- 
tracted scene of progressive bodily decay. 
He filled for a time the office of Secretary of 
the New York State Colonization Society, and 
subsequently edited two volumes of his own 
sermons, permanent memorials of his intellec- 
tual culture, his generous, Christian sympa- 
thy, and his real, undoubted power in the 
pulpit. 

His latest days were spent in this City. 
Confined entirely to his house five months 
before his change came, he marked the gra- 
dual approach of death with the utmost se- 
renity. In reply to inquiries respecting his 
spiritual prospects, he uniformly said, " Christ 
is all my hope." 

The night preceding his decease, his physi- 
cian telling him that he could not long sur- 



DEATH. 



93 



vive. he called for a paper containing a cove- 
nant with God. which he wrote and signed in 
his youth : but as. at the moment, it could 
not be found, he repeated it from memory, and 
then prayed aloud, for near half an hour, 
with touching earnestness and fervor. After 
his prayer, he spoke of the night as that of 
Saturday, and expressed a desire to see the 
light of another Sabbath. His wish was 
granted. He saw the dawn of .Sabbath, the 
twenty-third November. IS 51. broaden into 
day ; and. blessing God for His goodness, he 
yielded up his life in the fifty-fifth year of his 
age. 

On the afternoon of the following Tuesday, 
before the removal of his remains to Brook- 
lyn, his brethren of different denominations 
conducted, at the house where he had died, a 
touching burial service. The Eev. Henry G. 
Livingston, of the Reformed Dutch Church, 



94 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

offered prayer; the Eev. John Chambers, of 
the First Independent Presbyterian Church, 
read the fourteenth chapter of John's Gospel ; 
the Eev. Drs. Brainerd and Patton made ad- 
dresses ; the Rev. Dr. Wadsworth, of the other 
branch of the Presbyterian Church, offered 
the concluding prayer ; and the Rev. Dr. Ide, 
of the First Baptist Church, pronounced the 
benediction. Removed to Brooklyn, his body 
was first borne to the Church of which he 
had been pastor, where, on Wednesday, ap- 
propriate funeral services were held, and then 
was borne to its final resting-place in Green- 
wood Cemetery. 

The third pastor of this Church was the 
Rev. Ezra Stiles Ely, D.D. Elected at a 
congregational meeting, held 18th April, 
1844, two months after Dr. Carroll was con- 
strained to retire, he entered at once upon his 



THIRD PASTOR: INSTALLATION. 



05 



labors. He was received into Philadelphia 
Third Presbytery, Tuesday, the seventh day 
of October, 1845, and was installed the Sab- 
bath evening following. In the installation 
service, the Rev. Elias J. Richards presided, 
and proposed the constitutional questions; 
the Rev. Joel Parker, D.D., preached the ser- 
mon ; the Rev. John L. Grant delivered the 
charge to the pastor ; the Rev. Anson Rood, 
the charge to the people ; and the Rev. John 
McKnight offered the closing prayer. 

At the time of his installation he was in 
the sixtieth year of his age, and the fortieth 
of his ministry.* Born in Lebanon, Conn., 
13th June, 1786, of eminently pious parents, 
his father the honored pastor of Lebanon, he 
was converted, as he ever thought, when nine 

* The facts in Dr. Ely's life are gathered from varied, yet 
reliable sources. Special acknowledgments are due to Mrs. 
Ely. who, from memoranda in her possession, kindly aided in 
verifying what else would have been in doubt. 



96 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

years old, and was admitted to the communion 
of the Church when turned of twelve. Gra- 
duating from Yale College at the age of 
eighteen , he studied Theology under the di- 
rection of his venerated father ; was licensed 
to preach the Gospel by the Congregational 
Association of Windham, Conn., on the twelfth 
day of December, 1804 ; was called to the 
pastorate of Westchester parish, town of Col- 
chester, Conn.* and was installed there on the 
first day of October, 1806. 

After laboring three and a half years in 
Westchester, he accepted, in the spring of 
1810, a call to the office of stated preacher to 
the Hospital and Almshouse in the City of 
New York. Here he spent three years, re- 
cording his experiences in a book which he 
published under the title of " Ely's Journal," 
and which was republished in England, under 
the title of " Visits of Mercy." 



THIRD PASTOR: EARLIER LIFE. 97 

On the seventh day of June, 1813, he was 
invited by the Third Church and Congrega- 
tion of this City to preach as a probationer 
for three months. He accepted the invitation; 
was elected to the pastorate on Monday, the 
eleventh day of October, 1813 ; and, after a 
tedious and very famous ecclesiastical contest, 
was duly installed on the seventh day of Sep- 
tember, in the year 1814. 

He remained in the pastorate of the Third 
Church twenty-one years, when he resigned 
it to aid in person the establishment of a Col- 
lege and Theological Seminary in the State of 
Missouri. The enterprise was a noble concep- 
tion, and, for a time, had promise of success, 
but went down at length, into that financial 
vortex which, opening in 1837, engulfed so 
many private fortunes and public projects. 
Dr. Ely's own means were invested in the 
scheme, and were lost in the common wreck. 

9 



98 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

Keturning to this City about the time the 
pulpit of this Church was declared vacant, he 
accepted the call which the Congregation gave 
him, and, with the energy and zeal of a young 
man, began his ministry. 

Dr. Ely was a most remarkable man. 
Among the numerous able ministers of his 
own denomination he had, when at his prime, 
few superiors in talent, eloquence, position, in- 
fluence, power. He was a born orator. His 
personal appearance, to the very close of his 
pulpit ministrations, was singularly fine ; his 
voice, full, sonorous, clear; his enunciation, 
exact, deliberate, distinct; his manner, natu- 
ral, graceful, easy ; his memory as marvel- 
lously accurate as minutely comprehensive ; 
whilst his power of logical analysis, his 
breadth of mental range, his extraordinary 
affluence of language, and his perfect self- 
possession, were well-nigh unrivalled. Had 



THIRD PASTOR: QUALIFICATIONS. 99 

he possessed imagination in proportion to his 
other intellectual endowments, he would have 
taken rank with the great orators of the world. 

In theological attainment, he held a high 
place. Entering thoroughly into the contro- 
versies which thirty years ago convulsed the 
Presbyterian Church, and finally disrupted it, 
he approved himself, in print and on the floor 
of the General Assembly, an unquestionably 
skilful defender of what he held to be Gospel 
truth and Church order. 

The Stated Clerk of the General Assembly 
for eleven years ; the Moderator of the As- 
sembly in the year 1828 ; the pastor for a score 
of years of one of the largest Churches in the 
whole Presbyterian denomination ; the actual 
possessor and the generous steward of vast 
wealth; the elegant dispenser of profuse hos- 
pitalities; the genial companion; the culti- 
vated gentleman ; the ready writer ; the fluent 



100 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



speaker ; the popular preacher ; and, withal, 
the bright, cheerful, trusting, Christian man; 
Dr. Ely, in his first pastorate in this City, oc- 
cupied as much of the attention of the com- 
munity as any minister in Philadelphia, or, 
perhaps, in the entire country.* 

* It is scarcely possible to overstate Dr. Ely's activity, hos- 
pitality, charity, enterprise, enlightened Christian zeal, and 
large-hearted public spirit. In private benefactions he gave 
away a fortune ; to every scheme that promised to promote 
the welfare of men he rendered an unselfish aid. His timely 
assistance of the Jefferson Medical School of Philadelphia 
when struggling for life, is well known, and is a good illus- 
tration of his large and liberal sentiments. Dr. Gayley, in 
his "History of Jefferson Medical College," tells the story 
substantially thus : 

"It now became evident that for the College to succeed, a 
more eligible location and a more commodious building were 
necessary ; on this point, both the faculty and trustees were 
unanimous. But where were they to get the funds ? The 
institution had no endowment ; the faculty, though gifted 
with energy, talent, and enthusiasm, possessed little wealth ; 
the trustees, though desirous of the prosperity of the College, 
yet hesitated to assume the responsibility of purchasing a lot 
and erecting thereon a suitable edifice ; whilst the number of 
students and the revenue from fees were anything else than 



THIRD PASTOR: MINISTRY. 



101 



It is strong proof of Dr. Ely's devotion to 
the work of the ministry, and of his manly 
elasticity of spirit, that, when his cherished 
plans in the West were dashed, and his private 
fortune hopelessly lost, he was not unwilling 
to return to this City, the scene of past great- 
ness, and to undertake, on the verge of three- 
score, a laborious pastoral charge. 

With what fidelity and toil he met the re- 
quisitions of his office, I need not say. He 
stood in his place, year after year, unconscious, 

promising. The only collaterals the infant institution could 
produce were the untiring industry of her new and only par- 
tially tried professors and their sanguine confidence of future 
success. Such an investment no mere stoical money-lender 
would look at. A man was needed who, while possessed of 
the money, had the mental elevation to rise above the calcu- 
lations of the mere man of money, and the mental ability to 
estimate properly what force of character, a determined will, 
and a manly enthusiasm in carrying out a praiseworthy pur- 
pose can accomplish. Such a man was found in the Kev. Ezra 
Stiles Ely, D.D., a member of the Board of Trustees, and who, 
at a meeting of the Board, held March 22, 1827, assumed the 
responsibility of erecting a suitable building for the College." 

9* 



102 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

seemingly, that time and trial had been laying 
burdens on him. u His eye was not dim, nor 
his natural force abated/ 5 when suddenly, at 
seven o'clock, on the morning of Saturday, the 
twenty-third day of August, 1851, paralysis, 
that mighty agent of a mysterious Providence, 
brought his ministry, but not his life, to ab- 
rupt ending. He lived nearly ten years longer, 
but never regained the power of intelligible 
speech. On the fifteenth day of April, 1852, 
nine months after his attack, and when it was 
evident that he could never again discharge 
the duties of the pastorate, he was released by 
Philadelphia Fourth Presbytery from the re- 
sponsibilities of the office. 

But his attachment to this house, and to 
the Congregation worshipping in it, never 
abated. So long as he was able to go abroad, 
he would walk, on Sabbath mornings, a silent, 
venerable man, to this holy house, and, ascend- 



THIRD PASTOR: CLOSING DAYS. 



103 



ing the pulpit, a half hour, not infrequently, 
before the service began, would sit in the 
posture of profound devotion; and, when I 
entered, he would rise to offer his hand, with 
all the cordiality of a father, and with that 
peculiar grace which marks the Christian 
gentleman. In the time of prayer, he would 
stand beside me and, when prayer was ended, 
would utter his amen in the single word " God," 
occasionally extended to " God over all." 

This, for two years and more, was his uni- 
form custom; and, when unable to worship 
with us on Sabbath mornings, he would come 
to our services of communion, sitting in 
dignified silence beside the table where the 
emblems of his dear Lord's passion lay. At 
such times, one who noted him could not but 
be struck with the still brightness of his face, 
and the mute eloquence of his eye. 



104 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

But at length he failed from all.* Never 
leaving his home, but always meeting with 
smiles the friends that sought him, he slowly 
yielded to the progress of decay, breathing his 
last on the morning of Monday, the seven- 
teenth day of June, 1861, and the fourth day 
past his seventy-fifth birthday. His funeral, 
the Thursday following, was attended, in this 
Church, by many of his brethren, and a large 
concourse of his former parishioners. 

In the orderings of Providence, I had been 
called from the City before his death, and was 
not permitted to return in season for his fu- 
neral. The Kev. Dr. Patton read the Scrip- 
tures; the Rev. John Chambers, of the First 
Independent Presbyterian Church, offered 
prayer; the Rev. Dr. Malin read a carefully 

* His last appearance in the house of God, where for eight 
years he had ministered, was at the communion on the after- 
noon of Sabbath, the first day of November, 1857. 



THIRD PASTOR: FUNERAL. 105 

prepared sketch of his life ; the Eev. Albert 
Barnes paid a touching tribute to his memory; 
and the Eev. Dr. Steele, of the other branch 
of the Presbyterian Church, offered the closing 
prayer. Then, when the Congregation had 
defiled by the coffin to look upon his face for 
the last time, his body was borne to the pas- 
tor's vault, and was laid to rest near the dust 
of the first pastor. 

Dr. Ely's pastorate, including the eighteen 
months he supplied the pulpit as pastor elect, 
ran through eight full years. Few incidents 
beyond the ordinary ones of stated ministra- 
tions, in the pulpit, by the bedside, and at 
the grave, are embraced in the history of 
these years. The year 1847 saw the hand- 
some iron fence in front of the Church edifice 
replace the wooden one which for fifteen 
years had stood there, and the }xar 1851 wit- 
nessed extensive repairs to the Church edifice 



106 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

itself. The year 1848 was pre-eminently the 
year of revival, eighty-six persons during the 
year making public profession of faith in 
Christ. The whole number of additions to 
the Church in the eight years of Dr. Ely's 
ministry was two hundred and twenty-two, 
or a yearly average of twenty-eight. 

An interval of something more than six 
months lay between the ending of Dr. Ely's 
pastorate and the beginning of my own, the 
fourth in the half century past. The call 
to me was voted by the Congregation at a 
meeting held the fourth day of June, 1852, 
and was laid, with leave of Philadelphia 
Fourth Presbytery, by Commissioners ap- 
pointed for the purpose, before the Presbytery 
of the District of Columbia, of which I was a 
member, in the City of Washington, Thurs- 
day, the sixteenth day of September follow- 



FOURTH PASTOR: INSTALLATION. 



107 



ing. After hearing the case. Presbytery 
placed the call in my hands, and. upon ex- 
pression of my willingness to accept it. dis- 
solved my connection with the Church in 
Maryland, where for nine years I had labored, 
and transferred me to the Presbytery bavins 
oversight of this Church. 

I began my ministry here, in feeble health 
and depressed by doubt, on Sabbath, the third 
day of October. 1852 : was received by Phi- 
ladelphia Fourth Presbytery the Wednesday 
following ; and. on the evening of Tuesday , 
the second day of November next, was for- 
mally installed into the pastorate. At the 
service of installation, the Rev. George Duf- 
field. Jr.. Moderator of Presbytery, presided, 
preaching the sermon and proposing the con- 
stitutional questions : the Rev. John Cham- 
bers delivered the charge to the pastor ; and 



108 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



the Kev. William Ramsey, the charge to the 
people.* 



-Sabbath, 4th Dec, 1830. 



* Embarrassed often in preparing this Discourse, by want 
of accurate information as to dates, I place on record here, for 
the relief of any one who may undertake to write the second 
half-century history of this Church, the leading dates of my 
life: 

Born, in Clarke County, Ya. . . Saturday, 25th April, 1818. 

Admitted to the Communion- 
of the Presbyterian Church, 
Winchester, Ya., Eev. Wm. 
Hill, D.D., pastor. 

Graduated from Columbian^ 

College, Washington City, \ Wednesday, 2d Oct. 1839. 
D.C. j 

Graduated from Union Theo- ] 

logical Seminary, New York \- Wednesday, 28th June, 1843. 
City. j 

Licensed to preach the Gospel " 
by the Presbytery of the Dis- 
trict of Columbia, in the 4th 
Presbyterian Church, Wash- 
ington City, D.C. 

Ordained, sine titulo, by the ^ 
Presbytery of the District of 
Columbia, in Lisbon, Howard 
County, Maryland. 



Thursday Evening, 13th 
July, 1843. 



Thursday, 5th Oct. 1843. 



FOURTH PASTOR: ELEVEN YEARS' WORK. 109 



In the twelfth year of my pastorate to-day, 
I am impressed by the thought that I have 

In the service of Ordination, the 

Eev. James Knox, Moderator 

of Presbytery, presided ; the 

Eev. William McLain, D.D., 

preached the sermon ; and the 

Eev. James Gr. Hamner, D.D., 

delivered the charge to the 

Evangelist. 
Installed into the pastorate ^| 

of Harmony Presbyterian 

Church, Lisbon, Md., by a ^Wednesday, 8th May, 1844. 

Committee of the Presbytery 

of the District of Columbia. 
In the service of Installation, 

the Eev. Dr. Hamner pre- 
sided, preached the sermon, 

and delivered the charge to 

the people ; the Eev. James 

Knox, delivered the charge 

to the pastor. 
Dismissed from pastorate and "] 

from Presbytery, in Wash- I Thursday, 16th Sept. 1852. 

ington City, Fourth Church. J 
Preached farewell discourse - 

in Lisbon Church, Dr. Ham- 

\ Sabbath, 26th Sept. 1852. 

ner declaring the pulpit va- 
cant. J 

10 



110 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 



stood in the pulpit of this house longer than 
either of my predecessors. With an over- 
whelming sense of my incapacity for the 
great work of the ministry, I cannot withhold 
the utterance of thanks to this Congregation 
for the uniform kindness shown me, or the 
acknowledgment of gratitude to God for the 
measure of success accorded me. Nor can I, 
in justice both to your kindly co-operation, 
and to that Divine blessing which has made 
our joint labors, in any degree, successful, fail 
to place on record some few of the more pro- 
minent items in the history of our connection. 

Entered on ministry in Phila- ^ 

J I Sabbath, 3d Oct. 1852. 

delphia, N. L. First Church. J 

Eeceiyed into Philadelphia 1 

Fourth Presbytery at its stated I Wednesday, 6th Oct. 1852. 

meeting. J 

Installed into the pastorate" 

of Philadelphia, 1ST. L. First 

Tuesday Evening, 2d Noy. 

Church, by a Committee of - 

J f 1852. 

Philadelphia Fourth Presby 

tery. 



FOURTH PASTOR: 



ELEVEN YEARS' WORK. 



Ill 



One of these items is the reign of an un- 
broken peace. It is much to say, that amid 
all the infirmities, misconceptions, mistakes, 
so incident to our fallen humanity, we have 
maintained, through eleven years, the spirit 
of Christian unity and love. We have come 
to this holy house, Sabbath after Sabbath, with 
no heart-burnings, jealousies, rivalries, strifes ; 
we have known nothing in our assemblies 
but the song of praise, the voice of prayer, 
and the Word of God. Above us the gentle 
Dove has rested; upon us the soft dews of 
grace have silently distilled; around us the 
refreshing atmosphere of common esteem, re- 
spect, kindness, has pervadingly stretched. 

Another of the items deserving a place in 
the historic record of our connection is the 
extinguishment of that church-debt which 
for forty years was so burdensome and, at 
times, so threatening. Early in my pastorate 



112 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

this great object was resolved on, and, in 
1856, with commendable liberality and tho- 
rough unanimity, was happily consummated. 

Another of the items which should find a 
prominent place in the record of our connec- 
tion embraces the additions and improve- 
ments to the property of the Corporation. 
The erection of an organ, the construction of 
furnace-heaters, the tasteful remodelling of 
the Lecture-room, the substantial repairs of 
all the rooms under the audience-chamber, 
the fitting-up of a separate Sunday-school 
library-room, and other valuable improve- 
ments which need not be specified, have added 
greatly to our comfort and efficiency. These 
improvements were materially aided by a 
legacy from the late James Gay, Esq., Presi- 
dent of the Board of Trustees, who, dying 
whilst they were in progress, manifested thus 



FOURTH PASTOR: ELEVEN YEARS' WORK. 113 

his affection for the Church in which for more 
than thirty years he had worshipped. 

Still another of the items which belong to 
the history of our connection is the enlarge- 
ment of our contributions to denominational 
enterprises and to the general objects of a 
common Christianity. At the beginning of 
my pastorate, the average of the annual con- 
tributions to all objects was five hundred dol- 
lars ; during my pastorate, these contributions 
have so steadily augmented that the annual 
average through the whole eleven years has 
been fifteen hundred dollars. In contribu- 
tions to some specific objects, the advance 
has been very marked. For example: in the 
year 1854— 5, sixty dollars were contributed 
to the Education cause ; in the year 1862-3, 
two hundred and fifty-six dollars : at the open- 
ing of the year IS 55. the contribution to Fo- 
reign Missions was seventy-five dollars ; at 

10* 



114 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

the opening of the year I860, five hundred 
and fifty-one dollars ; and, at the opening of 
the year 1863, eight hundred dollars. 

Still another of the items which enter into 
the history of our connection is the forth- 
putting of Christian activity. In tract dis- 
tribution, in charitable visitation, and espe- 
cially in Sunday-school labor, it has been ours 
to hold an honored place. In our Sunday- 
schools we have had a corps of teachers, male 
and female, which any Church might well be 
proud of. As Churches now are constituted, 
the Sunday-school, more than all agencies 
beside, demands the talent, disciplines the 
skill, and directs the labor of their members. 
Sunday-school teachers are pre-eminently the 
Church's working force. Found in the schools, 
they are found also in the lanes and alleys of 
a great City, in the social prayer-meetings, 
and in the sanctuary services. Giving time, 



FOURTH PASTOR: ELEVEN YEARS 1 WORK. 115 



strength, money, to the work of practical 
Christianity, they never withhold from pas- 
tors the truest sympathy or the best support. 
Through their exertions, in ami v. during my 
pastorate, two simultaneous and thorough ex- 
plorations of the Districts immediately east 
and west of this Church edifice, have been 
made with gratifying results, in gathering 
children into the schools and families into the 
Congregation. From their classes have come 
much the larger proportion of additions to 
our communion, and all the young men who. 
justly esteemed our jewels, are prosecuting 
studies preparatory to the Gospel ministry. 

Still another of the items which I would 
include in the history of our connection, is 
the display of hearty sympathy with our Coun- 
try in the gigantic struggle for life now eoins: 
forward. We have had no lust of conquest, 
no purpose of vandal violence, no design to 



116 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

affect injuriously the rights and interests of 
any section of our land, or of any portion of 
our countrymen, but we have had that love of 
law, order, government, nationality, which has 
risen superior to every subordinate considera- 
tion, and has ranged us with all who demand 
nothing less than that the flag of our fathers, 
undimmed by the loss of a single star, shall 
float from the Lakes to the Gulf, and from the 
Atlantic to the Pacific shore. We are tho- 
roughly serious in this ; we are purely, prayer- 
fully, profoundly conscientious. Hence, we 
have given our money to the national cause, 
and to the relief of sick, suffering soldiers. 
Hence, too, we have given our personal ser- 
vice to the brave men whom disease or disaster 
made inmates of our hospitals. And hence, 
above all, we have given, first and last, more 
than one hundred of our sons, husbands, bro- 
thers, to that great army whose simple, sub- 



FOURTH PASTOR: ELEYEX YEARS' WORK. 117 

lime task is that of defending, against domestic 
traitors and foreign foes, our Country's in- 
tegrity. Of our own volunteers, some have 
come back to us with shattered health, and 
some have been borne to us in coffins, but all 
are enshrined forever in our hearts. 

Still another of the items which I would 
record among the prominent facts in the his- 
tory of our connection, is the joyful entrance 

into Heaven of so man v from our communion. 

*/ 

We account it the end of all Church-arrange- 
ments, and of all Christian efforts to save 

souls : to fit immortal ones for the holv com- 

* «/ 

panionships of the skies. We may not say 
that all who die in the visible Church are of 
necessity numbered among the saved, but 
from the seventy Church-members whom I 
have buried, we can single out many of whose 
joyful entrance into Heaven we may not have 
a doubt. Among these sainted dead are two 



118 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

of our Elders, Isaac Will and Charles Deal ; 
among them, some of the holiest men and de- 
voutest women this Church has ever had. 
The days we laid their bodies in the dust were 
sad days with us ; but, remembering them this 
morning, we murmur not, nor grieve. We 
rather rejoice that they are safe in glory ; that 
they no longer tread earth's toilsome, tearful 
ways ; that they are holy, happy now, and 
will be growingly forever. 

But, omitting other items in the history of 
our connection, I would simply add that 
during my pastorate, I have solemnized one 
hundred and eleven marriages ; have attended 
to the grave two hundred and thirty of the 
dead ; have administered baptism to two hun- 
dred and eleven persons, children and adults; 
and have received the covenant vows of three 
hundred and thirty-one persons connecting 
themselves with this Church, either on pro- 



FOURTH PASTOR: ELEVEN YEARS' WORK. 119 

fession or on certificate, an annual average of 
thirty. 

Our growth has been gradual but stable. 
We have had no seasons of marked excite- 
ment and of large ingathering, but we have 
had the Spirit's influence descending as the 
dew. The year 1858 was one of more than 
ordinary quickening, fifty-four persons enter- 
ing our communion. And, to-day, without 
reckoning the names of more than a hundred 
persons who, in the changes of pastorates, and 
especially of residences in a crowded city, 
have dropped from the knowledge of Session, 
we count four hundred and sixty names on 
our roll of Church-members. 

We have, too, abundant occasion to thank 
God for the steady progress we have made in 
pecuniary strength. It is a noteworthy, gra- 
tifying fact that, amid all the losses, ex- 
penditures, and excitements of a wasting civil 



120 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



war, the past year has been, in contributions 
and Church-income, the very best year of my 
pastorate. 

But I turn from these special notices of the 
four pastorates in succession, to state briefly 
some general particulars illustrative of con- 
tinuous congregational life. 

In reading the manuscript records of the 
Corporation, I have been constantly reminded 
that an accurate account of the varied modes 
of warming and lighting the Church edifice, 
would be the history of much of the world's 
progress in science and art the past half 
century. 

The mode of warming the Church edifice 
in use at the installation of Mr. Patterson, 
was that of ten-plated, wood-burning stoves. 
Two years later, an immense improvement on 



MODES OF WARMING CHURCH EDIFICE. 121 



these stoves was effected, as was thought, by 
setting up what are described as Pyramid 
Stoves, but wood-burners still. It is in No- 
vember, 1819, that we first read of an order 
to purchase coal for the Session room, and this 
by way of experiment.* 

Wood and coal apparently waged with each 
other a doubtful warfare for years, when the 
gradual change of public opinion brought coal 
into the ascendant. At the transfer of the 
Congregation to this house, coal was the only 
fuel used, but, from the imperfection of the 
stoves in which it was burned, failed to sup- 
ply the requisite warmth. 

At length, in a happy moment, some one 
invented, and the Trustees introduced, those 
huge, coal-burning heaters, which, four in num- 
ber, were set up in the basement rooms beneath 
registers opening in the aisles of the audience- 

* Manuscript records of the Board of Trustees. 
11 



122 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

chamber, and which, in use when I began my 
ministry, had the merit of thoroughly roast- 
ing all in the Sunday-schools around them, if 
they did not comfortably warm all who came 
to worship above them. 

In time, these heaters gave place to two 
furnaces in a single air-chamber underneath 
the basement rooms. This improvement, made 
in 1856, at a cost of four hundred and fifty 
dollars, has proved eminently satisfactory. 

Such in outline, is the history of warming 
the house in which the Congregation have 
worshipped. It is substantially the history 
of coal consumption ; of steamships and iron- 
plated monitors ; of railroads and workshops ; 
of mining, mechanical, and manufacturing 
industry. 

Nor is the history of lighting less suggestive 
than the history of warming. Fifty years ago, 
evening services in the Church edifice were 



MODES OF LIGHTING CHURCH EDIFICE. 123 



not held. The revival of 1816 made the first 
demand for such services ; and, in that year, 
we read of the purchase of ten brass branch 
candlesticks, and of a box of mould candles.* 
In 1818, at the instance of some progres- 
sives in the Board of Trustees, lamps for oil 
were ordered, but a conflict between candles 
and oil, similar to that between wood and 
coal, seems for a long time to have been main- 
tained with like result. At the opening of this 
house in 1832, oil alone was in use, and con- 
tinued in use until 1841, when gas displaced it. 

* Manuscript records of the Board of Trustees. 

During most of the first quarter of this century, candles were 
universally used for lighting Churches. In the manuscript 
journals of Mr. Isaac Snowden, an elder for many years in the 
Second Church, is a notice, under date of Monday, 23d May, 
1803, of a missionary sermon preached in the Second Church 
by the Rev. Mr. Kollock. After mentioning that Drs. Alex- 
ander and Green aided Mr. Kollock in the services introduc- 
tory to the sermon, he adds: 1 i These gentlemen sat in the 
pulpit and snuffed the candles, so that neither the speaker nor 
the audience were interrupted by the sexton's going up and 
down repeatedly to and from the pulpit." 



124 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

Candles, oil, gas! What three words could 
better tell the eventful story of the world's 
half century progress ! 

The history of this Church cannot be 
written without some notice of its Sunday- 
schools. In 1815, as I have had occasion 
already to remark, the Union Sabbath-School 
Association, .composed of worshippers in this 
Church, was formed, at the instance of Mr. 
Patterson, to search out poor children, to 
gather them into schools, to instruct them 
gratuitously in the Scriptures, not less than 
one hour on the morning and afternoon of 
every Sabbath, to go with them to the house 
of God, to watch over them during Divine 
service, and tenderly to pray for them.* 

* Preamble to the Constitution and By-laws of the Union 
Sabbath-School Association. 

The Association suggested by Mr. Patterson in aid of Sun- 
day-schools, embodies the two ideas of gratuitous and religious 



CHURCH EFFICIENCY IN SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 125 



The first members of this Association were 
almost entirely females, who, for years, took 
the chief oversight and direction of its schools, 
whilst the management of its finances was 
intrusted to the male members. At the close 
of its first year of labor, coincident with the 
close of those protracted services which the 
revival of 1816 prompted, a very large school, 

instruction. It is believed to have been the first association 
of the kind in this country; certainly the first in this city. 
Before its organization, benevolent individuals, here and 
there, had labored on this plan, but had never reduced its 
underlying principles to system, and had never summoned 
church-members, as such, to co-operative effort. In 1791, the 
First-day or Sunday-School Society, of Philadelphia, was 
formed, but its teachers were hired and its teaching more 
secular than religious. In 1810, the Eev. Eobert May, an 
English Independent minister, sojourning in Philadelphia, 
preparatory to entering on the work of missions in India, 
originated an association of gratuitous teachers, but the charac- 
ter of the instruction was the same as that of the Pirst-day 
Society. His effort contemplated simply the saving of ex- 
pense in the conduct of Sunday-schools, and so the extension 
of their benefits. "When he left for India, the Society he was 
instrumental in forming, declined and died. 

11* 



126 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

consisting of a male and female department, 
was in hopeful progress, in separate rooms, on 
Coates Street, near the Church edifice. 

The success of this school, and the quickened 
zeal of the Congregation, stimulated the es- 
tablishment of other schools; some under the 
care of the Union Sabbath-School Associa- 
tion; some under the care of members of 
the Church, acting independently; and some 
under the care of a second association, styled 
"The Combined Sabbath-School Association 
of the Northern Liberties." I am not able to 
state the precise order in which these several 
schools were begun, the records of the Union 
Sabbath-School Association for the first five 
years of its history, and all the records of the 
Combined Sabbath-School Association, through 
the whole term of its fifteen years' existence, 
having been lost; but, in 1820, the Union 
Sabbath-School Association had under its care 



CATALOGUE OF SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 127 

five schools, which are named as follows : the 
Coates Street School: the Spring Garden 
School ; the Cohocksink School : the Kensing- 
ton School, and the Colored School. These 
schools are reported as having an aggregate of 
six hundred and fifty scholars. Of them. I 
first submit some brief notices. 

The Coates Street School, at all times the 
largest, formed an important part of the con- 
gregations in the Church edifice on the Sab- 
bath, and contributed much of the material 
from which additions to the communion were 
drawn. In 1833, it was transferred, with the 
Congregation, to the new Church edifice on 
Buttonwood Street, where it still lives in mani- 
festation of an energy and success quite equal 
to any showings of the past.* 

* The number of enrolled scholars in this school is about 
250 : the amount of annual contributions to benevolent objects 
about $300. In the school is also a Mite Society composed of 
the teachers and their friends, and organized to raise means 



128 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

The Spring Garden School, begun in 1817, 
as nearly as I can determine, was held at the 
corner of Buttonwood and Eighth Streets. At 
its opening, some fifty children were in attend- 
ance, gathered from poor dwellings, which nu- 
merous butcher shambles in that vicinity had 
attracted. Between the site of the school and 
the built portions of the town, there stretched 
a wide interval of open grounds and of occa- 
sional lots, inclosed with post and rail fences. 
Here, for thirty-four years, a corps of faithful 
teachers, with much to encourage them most 
of the time, perseveringly labored, relinquish- 
ing their work not until the changed circum- 
stances of the District, and the urgent calls for 
laborers elsewhere, plainly demanded it. 

The Cohocksink School, begun, as I suppose, 

for paying the salary of a music instructor, and for making 
additions to the library. The mite collections, last year, were 
rising $200. 



CATALOGUE OF SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 



129 



about the time of that in Spring Garden, was 
located, according to the records of the Asso- 
ciation, "a mile and a half from town." Its 
average attendance of scholars through most 
of the ten years of its existence numbered 
eighty. Its remoteness and the consequent dif- 
ficulty in commanding the services of teachers 
led to its discontinuance in the year 1828, 
but not before other Churches, in the vicinity, 
were prepared to carry forward the work it 
had begun.* 

The Kensington School, opened near the 
time of the opening of the Spring Garden and 
Cohocksink Schools, was located at the first, 
in " Frankforcl Road above Otter." Its his- 

* In December. 1818, Mr. Patterson reported to Philadel- 
phia Presbytery that he had organized "The First Church of 
Cohocksink." with two elders. The Church was taken under 
care of Presbytery, but never became self-sustaining, and, 
finally, was disbanded. The present First Church of Cohock- 
sink was organized by Key. Dr. John McDowell, 8th March, 
1840. 



130 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

tory is one of singular alternations between 
the gladness of success and the gloom of des- 
pondency. At one time, over two hundred 
children and more teachers than can be well 
employed, are in attendance ; at another time, 
few children and fewer teachers extort from 
successive superintendents the wail of lamen- 
tation. For eighteen years of its history it 
was a migratory school, wandering from room 
to room and from street to street, wherever it 
could find a local habitation. So great were 
the embarrassments from this source, and so 
important was the school to the destitute Dis- 
trict immediately around it, that the Associa- 
tion, in 1835, erected, on Dun ton Street above 
Otter, a school-house, which, finished in May 
of the following year, furnished the long- 
needed accommodation. In this house, with 
varying fortunes, the school was continued 
until November, 1862, when, from the multi- 



CATALOGUE OF SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 131 



plication of Churches and schools in its neigh- 
borhood, its discontinuance was judged expe- 
dient. 

The Coloeed School began its existence 
somewhat later than the other mission-schools, 
and, for more than ten years, was efficiently 
conducted. Its locality was a room on Coates 
Street above Fourth, where now stands the 
African Methodist Episcopal Union Church. 
Here, with manifest tokens of the Divine ap- 
proval and blessing, two hundred scholars, 
children and adults, were frequently assem- 
bled ; but the formation of a Colored Church, 
and the necessity of concentrating the interest 
of the colored people, led to the discontinu- 
ance of the school in the year 1829.* 

* This colored Sunday-school was not the only instrumen- 
tality employed by the Church to bless and save the colored 
population of the Liberties. In Brown Street above Fourth, 
where now the Zoar Church stands, a xight school for colored 
adults, one evening in the week, was successfully carried on 



132 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 



Coincident with the discontinuance of the 
Colored School was the reception by the 
Union Sabbath-School Association, of a school 
named the Nazarene, which individual mem- 
bers of the Church, young ladies chiefly, had, 
four years before, begun on Charlotte Street 
near Franklin. Starting with one hundred 
scholars, and reaching two hundred in a few 
months, this school was one of great efficiency. 
In 1830, it was removed, on the invitation of 
Mr. George Wilson, to a large, new, brick 
Sunday-school house, which he, at his own 
expense, had erected on ground in the line of 
Fourth Street, and above the present Thomp- 
son Street, where for years it was held. 

But whilst the Union Sabbath-School Asso- 
ciation was thus aiding the work of gratuitous, 

for years. In this school, many of the most respectable 
colored people of the District were taught to read and write, 
of whom some few still live to praise their benefactors. The 
average attendance is represented ^ fifty scholars. 



CATALOGUE OF SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 133 

religious instruction, another association, con- 
sisting of members of this Church, was formed 
for a similar purpose. This association was 
stvled " The Combined/' and was organized 
in the year 1818. It had under its care, from 
first to last, according to the best information 
I have been able to gather, four Schools : one 
at the corner of Second Street and German- 
town Road, begun in 1818 and removed in 
1820 to Berkley Court, now Lawrence Street, 
where, for }^ears, the average attendance was 
sixty scholars ; another, in the third story of 
the Lecture-room on Coates Street, begun 
about 1819 and continued several years, with 
an average attendance of seventy-five scholars ; 
another in Ulriek's Alley, but the time of be- 
ginning and the average attendance I cannot 
ascertain ; and the other at the corner of Third 
Street and Germantown Road, begun about 
1821, but soon removed to a commodious Mis- 

12 



134 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



sion Schoolhouse, which the Association had 
built on ground a little north of Otter, where 
Hope Street now is. This fourth School was 
the principal one, numbering never less than 
one hundred and fifty scholars, and exerting, 
for more than a dozen years, an extended and 
healthful influence.* 

Beside the ten schools thus briefly de- 
scribed, six under the care of the Union 
Sabbath-School Association, and four under 
the care of the Combined, there were begun, 
at various times, thirteen others, which I can 
merely enumerate. 

. * In this Mission House, 2d October, 1832, Mr. Patterson 
organized " The Second Presbyterian Church of Kensing- 
ton." To aid in forming this organization, fourteen persons 
from his pastoral charge had been dismissed. Three elders 
were elected, Samuel Wilson, William E. Cornwell, and David 
Henderson ; all late members of Philadelphia L. First 
Church. In 1838, the Church changed its ecclesiastical rela- 
tions by union with the German Eeformed denomination, but 
in 1846 was disbanded, most of its members entering Kensing- 
ton First Church, Kev. George Chandler, pastor. 



CA TAL G UE OF S VXD A Y-SCHO OLS. 1 35 

First, the Barton School, near the spot 
where Laurel and Front Streets now intersect, 
begun about 1817, and continued several years, 
with an average attendance of one hundred 
scholars. 

Next, the Hart Lane School, three miles 
from town, in the line of Second Street, be- 
gun in 1820 and continued two years, with an 
average attendance of fifty scholars. 

Next, the Rising Sun School, at the fork 
of the Germantown and York Roads, begun 
about 1822, and continued some three years, 
with an average attendance of sixty scholars. 

Next, the Race Street School, at Twelfth 
and Race, in a poor suburb of the City pro- 
per, begun about 1821, and continued five 
years, with an average attendance of seventy- 
five scholars. 

Next, the Eastburn School, on Charlotte 
Street near Beaver, begun about 1825, and 



136 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



continued for more than twenty years, with 
an average attendance of one hundred and 
fifty scholars. 

Next, the Kirke White School, begun in 
1828, on Kunkle, now Dillwyn Street, above 
Callowhill, and subsequently removed to 
Keim's Hall, on Fourth Street below Callow- 
hill, with an average attendance of seventy- 
five scholars. 

Next, the Infant School, which begun in 
the studv of the new Church edifice on But- 
ton wood Street in 1834, and sus}3ended in 
1841, w r as, two years after, under the auspices 
of the Union Sabbath-School Association, re- 
sumed in the Trustees' room, where, to-day, it 
is large and flourishing.* 

* This school has more than one hundred and fifty enrolled 
scholars. It gives from thirty to forty dollars annually to 
Foreign Missions, and sends annually to the more advanced 
school, taught in the Lecture-room of the Church, an average 
of twenty-five children. 



CATALOGUE OF SUNDAY-SCHOOLS. 137 

Next, the Missionary School, which begun 
about 1835 on Sixth Street above Poplar, and 
subsequently removed to Sixth and Coates. 
was, with an average attendance of eighty 
scholars, taken under the care of the Union 
Sabbath-School Association in 1838. but was 
discontinued in 1839. 

Next, the Mariox School, opened the sixth 
day of December. 1835. and continued for 
four years in Smith's Alley, with an average 
attendance of sixty scholars. 

Next, the Coates Street Colored School, 
begun about 1810, in Coates Street above 
Fifth, and continued some three years, with 
an average attendance of ninety scholars. 

Next, the Uxion School, which begun in 
1852. by the Union Sabbath-School Associa- 
tion, in the Lecture-room of the old Church on 
Coates Street above Second, had. when trans- 
ferred that same year to the Union Presby- 

12* 



133 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 



terian Church of the Northern Liberties, more 
than one hundred scholars.* 

Next, the Pejot Hose School, begun in the 
South Penn Hose House, in the spring of 
1859, but, after a few months' existence, sus- 
pended. 

Next, the Briggsville School, which, be- 
gun in Delaware County, near Media, in the 
spring of 1860, by one of our students for 
the Gospel ministry, is aided annually by the 
Buttonwood Street School with gifts of money 
and books, and, through eight months of the 
year, with an average attendance of fifty scho- 
lars, is most efficiently conducted.*]" 

* The Union Presbyterian Church was constituted by Phi- 
ladelphia Fourth Presbytery, in October, 1852, of forty-five 
communicants, dismissed for the purpose by the Session of 
Philadelphia 1ST. L. Pirst Church. The enterprise proving 
unsuccessful, the Church was disbanded, many of its members 
returning to their old home. 

f See Appendix IY. 



S UNDA Y- SCHOOL INSTR UCTION. 



139 



Thus, it appears that, first and last, during 
forty-nine years of Sunday-school labor, this 
Church has had the care of not less than 
twenty-three schools, some of them large, and 
none of them with a smaller average attend- 
ance than fifty scholars. If, to-day, we could 
assemble all who, as superintendents, librari- 
ans, teachers, scholars, were identified more 
or less closely with these schools, what an 
exceeding great armv would confront us! 

The plan of instruction early adopted in 
the schools, and rigidly adhered to for years, 
was the recitation of Scripture verses and of 
hymns.* Brown's Catechism was subse- 
quently introduced, and, later still, the As- 

* In the recitation of Scripture verses, some pupils in the 
schools displayed remarkable power of memory. It is related 
that in the Eastburn School, a young lady, during the few 
years of her attendance as a scholar, recited to the superin- 
tendent the whole of the New Testament and quite one-half 
of the Old. 



140 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

sembly's Shorter Catechism. Question-books 
are of comparatively recent date. 

In reward for memoriter recitations, tickets, 
blue and red, were given, and, at fixed rates, 
were exchanged for premium books, the pre- 
sentation of which, on Christmas or New 
Years day, was the festival time of the year. 
The ticket system continued in use until 1840, 
when it was abandoned. Two years after- 
ward, however, it was restored; but, in 1844, 
was again abandoned. In 1857, it was once 
more adopted, but, the year following, was 
finally abandoned. 

For ten years past it has been the custom, 
at the anniversary of the schools in May, to 
present a copy of the Scriptures to every 
scholar who, during the year, has accurately 
recited to the pastor the Assembly's Shorter 
Catechism. Scores of Bibles, worthily won, 
have thus been widely distributed. 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL LIBRARIES. 



141 



As early as the year 1821, attention was 
directed to the formation of libraries for the 
schools, but it was not until 1827 that this 
important enterprise was earnestly attempted. 
The teachers of the Coates Street School, con- 
tributing themselves the money, purchased a 
library of two hundred volumes, and their 
example was speedily followed by the teachers 
in all the schools. In 1836, when the Coates 
Street School had been three years in the 
Church edifice on Buttonwood Street, the 
teachers again contributing the money, a new 
library of six hundred volumes was purchased. 
This library was the beginning of that now in 
use, which, after the wear and waste of more 
than a quarter century, and with, perhaps, 
not a volume in it of the original purchase, 
numbers to-day more than one thousand vo- 
lumes, many of them valuable. 

In 1846 the first Sunday-school papers were 



142 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

purchased, and, with occasional changes of the 
papers themselves, the choice alternating be- 
tween those published by the American Sun- 
day-School Union and those by the American 
Tract Society, have ever since been statedly 
distributed. 

From the beginning of my pastorate to the 
present time, I have been accustomed to meet 
the schools taught in the Church edifice, on 
the first Sabbath of every alternate month, 
to catechize them in the Assembly's Shorter 
Catechism, and to preach the Gospel to them. 
The preaching services have ever been charac- 
terized by thorough attention and eager inte- 
rest; and, as I have had occasion to know, 
have not been unattended by the blessing of 
Him who, in the days of His flesh, said, 
" Suffer little children, and forbid them not, 
to come unto me ; for of such is the kingdom 
of Heaven." 



SUNDAY-SCHOOL CHARITIES. 1-13 

In all the schools, too. from the earliest 
times to the present, systematic contributions 
to benevolent objects have been made. It is 
suggestive to read the record of these objects. 
Now the contribution is in aid of the educa- 
tion of Indian youth ; now, of some colored 
man who is about to enter Africa as a mis- 
sionary; now. of some young man, a member 
of the Church, who is struggling to enter the 
ministry ; now. of Sunday-schools in the 
West; now, of Bible distribution; now. of a 
feeble Church, sometimes in, sometimes near 
Philadelphia; now. of Home Missions; and 
now, of Foreign Missions. Thus the whole 
field of Christian enterprise has been, year 
by year, surveyed; and thus an intelligent 
sympathy with Christ's heart has been steadily 
fostered. 

But I may not extend this general notice 
of our Sunday-schools. Nor may I attempt 



144 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 



the slightest estimate of the good which these 
schools have effected. What thousands they 
have trained for usefulness on earth ; what 
thousands for happiness in heaven! Some 
faint reflections of their manifold utilities 
may, indeed, be seen in the material prosper- 
ity of the various localities where they have 
noiselessly wrought, especially in the number 
and influence of the Churches occupying their 
sites, and, by natural law, outspringing from 
them, but their real power, and their actual 
results, can only be learned from the revela- 
tions of eternity. 

The Eldership of this Church deserves a 
fuller notice and ampler justice than I can 
give. In the fifty years now past, twenty-one 
persons have been inducted into the office : 
four by Dr. Janeway in connection with the 
organization of the Church ; nine by Mr. Pat- 



ELDERSHIP. 



145 



terson ; three by Dr. Carroll ; five by ine.* 
Of the four ordained and installed bv Dr. 
Janeway, not one is now living. Of the nine 
ordained and installed by Mr. Patterson, but 
two are living, Samuel S. Barry and Adam 
H. Hixkel : the former, in Yonkers, N. Y. ; 
the latter, an Elder, still with us. Of the 
three ordained and installed by Dr. Carroll, all 
are living, but all have gone from us to other 
churches : Axthon t y Green, to Milwaukee ; 
William Sobt, to Beverly, N. J. ; Nicholas 
B. Unruh, to Germantown. Of the five 
ordained and installed by me, one, Charles 
Deal, has deceased, but the surviving four, 
John B. Stevexsox, Jacob H. Ziegenfus, 
Peter A. Jordan, and Eli H. Eldridge, are 
all members of our Session to-day.* 

Of the twenty-one who, during the half 
century, have served in the Eldership, five, 

* See Appendix V. 
13 



146 the days that are past 

John Gourley, Robert Sawyer, Joseph Ab- 
bott, Isaac Will, and Charles Deal, deceased 
while in office. Although unable to describe 
these brethren as their worth and work de- 
mand, I may not yet omit brief notice of them. 

John Gourley, the first of our Elders dying 
in office, was one of the four whom Dr. 
Janeway ordained and installed on Sabbath, 
the twenty-third day of May, 1813. He was 
a man of singularly amiable and gentle spirit, 
a devout Christian, and a faithful elder. 

In the revival of 1816, he rendered valua- 
ble aid to the overburdened pastor, but through 
most of the following year, he was an invalid. 
He appeared in Session the last time on the 
seventh day of January, 1817, and thence- 
forward to the seventeenth day of November, 
when he died, his strength of body slowly, 
yet steadily, declined. His end was peace. 



ELDERS DYING IN OFFICE. 147 

Egbert Sawyer, the second of our Elders 
dying in office, was received into the commu- 
nion of this Church, on public profession of 
faith in Christ, the fifth day of March. 1814; 
was ordained and installed by Mr. Patterson 
on the eighteenth day of July, 1820 ; and was 
called to die on the fourth day of January, 
IS 30. As member and Elder of the Church 
he was equally conscientious and indefatiga- 
ble in every good word and work. 

In the Eldership he approved himself one 
of Mr. Patterson's most efficient helpers. He 
was pre-eminently the praying and working 
Elder. Engaged, six clays of the week, in a 
laborious occupation, which gave him. at noon, 
but a single hour for rest, he habitually spent 
the half of it in closet prayer. He kept in 
his drawer a paper on which he had written 
the names of persons whom he wished to re- 



148 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

member at a throne of grace, and, day by day, 
in their behalf, he wrestled with Jehovah. 

Of those he prayed for, many were con- 
verted, and some were made most eminent 
Christians. Singular to tell, his ordinary 
speech was slow and stammering, but in 
prayer his fluency and fervor were alike re- 
markable. 

Nor was he more earnest in praying than 
in working. The evening of every week-day 
found him somewhere in religious meetings: 
two evenings in the Church ; the other four 
in little gatherings for prayer and exhorta- 
tion which he himself had planned. 

Like his pastor, he had a passion for saving 
souls. He overlooked no lane or alley ; he 
passed by no humble, wretched home in all 
the Liberties. Through night and storm, 
guided by his lantern, which was his almost 
constant companion in missionary work, he 



ELDERS DYING IN OFFICE. 149 

went everywhere. It is belie ved, that to all 
residing in the District, the person and the 
lantern of Robert Sawyer were well-nigh as 
familiar as the principal streets or the promi- 
nent buildings. 

Liberal in money gifts, although of mode- 
rate circumstances, diligent in business, fervent 
in spirit, serving the Lord, he was universally 
respected, and when he died, " devout men 
made great lamentation over him." 

Under date of fourth January, 1830, Mr. 
Patterson wrote in his journal: "This day I 
witnessed the calm and peaceful death of one 
of the most useful men in my Church. That 
Scripture, indeed, was fulfilled in him, 'Mark 
the perfect man, and behold the upright, for 
the end of that man is peace.' A few minutes 
before he ceased to breathe, he was asked if 
he had any fears of death. He replied, 'No, 
no fears at all.' He was one of my best friends 

13* 



150 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

and supporters; and I thank the great Head 
of the Church that He gave me so useful a 
man. Perhaps few men, if any, in this City, 
made a better use of their talents and influ- 
ence than he did." 

Joseph Abbott, the third of our Elders 
dying in office, was one of the four ordained 
and installed by Dr. J aneway, and was asso- 
ciated with Mr. Patterson, in the Church Ses- 
sion, a longer term than any other Elder. He 
was a man of strong sense, of calm, clear 
judgment, and of unquestioned, unquestion- 
able piety. Without the culture of Francis 
Markoe, and without the fervor of Robert 
Sawyer, he revealed a character so noble in 
attribute, and so massive in proportion, that 
his influence was scarcely inferior to that of 
either. 

He was especially distinguished by know- 



ELDERS DYING IN OFFICE. 151 

ledge of Scripture. He made the word of 
God, in literal sense, the man of his counsel. 
Mr. Patterson, himself a diligent Bible stu- 
dent, is quoted as saving, that of all the men 
he ever knew, Joseph Abbott had the rarest 
and readiest command of Scripture texts. 

A safe and trusted counsellor, a quiet yet 
efficient worker, an invaluable church officer, 
a steadfast friend, a true, honest, Christian 
man, he stood beside his pastor through evil 
and through good report. On the records of 
Session, whatever name does not appear as 
present at meetings, where scores are asking 
admission to Church communion, or where 
unworthy members are to be dealt with in 
discipline, his name is never missed. 

At the close of November, 1831, he is re- 
corded as present at Session ; at the next Ses- 
sional meeting, some few weeks thereafter, he 



152 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

is absent, and never again is present, for God, 
meanwhile, has said to him, "Come up higher." 

Isaac Will, the fourth of our Elders 
dying in office, was converted and received 
into the Church during the great revival of 
1816, and was, with Robert Sawyer and 
Robert Wallace, ordained and installed by 
Mr. Patterson on the eighteenth day of July, 
1820. For thirty-seven years, nearly, he filled 
with great fidelity and acceptance the office of 
Elder. In Sessional responsibility and labor 
he was associated with every pastor the Church 
has had : with Mr. Patterson more than seven- 
teen years; with me, nearly five. 

He was a fine example of the elevating and 
ennobling influence of Christianity. Possessed 
of few early advantages, and arrived at middle 
life w T hen making a profession of religion, he 
revealed a mental activity which before he 



ELDERS DYING IN OFFICE. 153 

had not shown, and sought with diligence the 
knowledge which now he felt the need of. He 
searched the Scriptures as for hid treasures ; 
he availed himself of whatever helps to the 
understanding of the Word he could com- 
mand; and he read with uncommon care the 
standard authors in divinity, and the best 
treatises in our language on practical religion. 

When I first knew him, he was seventy 
years old, yet his memory was uninrpaired, 
and his intelligence surprising. He was a 
Calvinist from experience and conviction. It 
was impossible to hear him pray without im- 
pression that his sense of dependence on God 
was real, and that his apprehension of truth 
was as comprehensive as clear. 

Entering the Session about the time that 
Francis Markoe, removing to New York City, 
left it, and when, of the earlier Elders, Joseph 
Abbott was the only one remaining, he ap- 



154 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

proved himself u not a whit behind the very 
chiefest." Working, like Robert Sawyer, with 
his own hands, day by day, like Robert Sawyer 
he was u instant in season, out of season ; 
purchasing to himself a good degree and great 
boldness in the faith which is in Christ Jesus." 

At the close of February, 1857, his seat in 
the Session and in the Sanctuary, was vacant 
because " he was sick nigh unto death.'' It 
was my privilege, almost daily, to speak to 
him of Jesus, and to hear from him the calm- 
est, most assuring testimonies to the power 
and the preciousness of that faith which, 
through more than forty years, he had pro- 
fessed. 

His disease was typhoid fever. On the 
morning of Thursday, 12th March, after a 
sleepless night, as the light of day streamed 
in and the restlessness he had been subject to 
subsided, he prayed aloud with manifest re- 



ELDERS DYING IN OFFICE. 155 

freshment, and, turning to his daughter, said., 
" Now I think I shall sleep." Sinking into 
gentle slumber, and continuing quiet for an 
hour or more, he was called but heard not. 
He slept in Jesus. He had died without 
movement, and while watchful love was guard- 
ing the stillness of his chamber. 

Charles Deal, the last of our Elders dying 
in office, was, on the thirteenth day of De- 
cember, 1839, during the pastorate of Dr. 
Carroll, received into the communion of this 
Church on certificate from the Franklin Street 
Presbyterian Church of Philadelphia. Elected 
to the office of Ruling Elder, he, with four 
others, was ordained and installed by me on 
the evening of the day we buried Isaac Will, 
the fifteenth day of March, 1857. 

He first made a profession of religion in 
the Fifth Presbyterian Church, a short time 



156 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

after its organization, and under the ministry 
of the Rev. James K. Burch, the predecessor 
of Dr. Skinner. His exercises of mind were 
unusually pungent; his conversion from sin 
to holiness most manifest a]jd thorough. 

From the beginning of his religious life to 
its close, he held steadily on his way. Never 
swayed by impulse, but always moved by 
principle, he was uniformly calm, considerate, 
conscientious, consistent. Year after year he 
sat at the head of his Sunday-school class, 
without show of weariness, or without thought 
of change. Year after year he filled his place 
in the Sabbath-congregation, and in the week- 
night assembly for lecture and social prayer, 
nor seemed to imagine that other than this 
was at all possible. 

His habitual sense of duty was as strong 
as I have ever known, and yet his modesty 
was as real as his merit. Indeed, if he erred 



ELDERS DYING IN OFFICE. 157 

in any respect, it was in not assuming in the 
Church that prominence to which his charac- 
ter, intelligence, position, and the free suffrage 
of his brethren alike entitled him. When 
nominated for the Eldership he shrank from 
the office, and would certainly have declined 
it, if conscience had allowed him, but when 
ordained and installed he carried into the new 
sphere of responsibility the same quiet earn- 
estness that he had always shown. 

He was permitted, however, to fill the office 
but little more than six months. The sum- 
mer of 1857 found him feeble, and made him 
more so. Present at our July communion he 
went soon after to the sea-side, but growing 
weaker rather than stronger he returned to 
the City, and, on the morning of Monday, the 
twenty-fourth day of August, yielded his life. 
He died as he had lived, " looking unto Jesus." 
On the Thursday following we buried him, 

14 



158 



THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 



not without tears : tears of grief that he had 
gone from earth; tears of gladness that he 
had entered heaven. 

But I must hasten. Of the fifty-two com- 
municants constituting this Church, Mrs. Eli- 
zabeth Gourley, wife of John Gourley, Elder, 
now Mrs. Close, widow of the late Henry 
Close, is the only survivor ; and she, to-day, 
is a communicant in the Church on Sixth 
Street above Green. With us, however, there 
lingers still a venerable woman, Mrs. Sarah 
Moore, who, connecting herself on profession 
with the Second Church in 1805 and wor- 
shipping at Second and Coates from the open- 
ing there by Dr. Green of the house which he 
and others built, was received on certificate 
into the communion of this Church, the fifth 
day of March, 1814, a few weeks after Mr. 
Patterson's installation. So far as I know, 



PERPETUITY OF CHURCH-LIFE. K>9 

these aged and devout women are the sole 
links between our Church's present and its 
earliest past. 

To the original fifty-two 3 there have been 
added, during the half century, twenty-five 
hundred and two persons, an average of fifty 
a year. Of the whole number connected with 
the Church from the first, many have died in 
its communion ; many have entered the com- 
munion of other Churches in this City or else- 
where : some have been dismissed in a body 
to constitute new Churches : and some have 
proved unfaithful to their covenant vows. 

What assurance have we in this that nei- 
ther death nor dismission nor defection can 
destroy an individual Church's life so long as 
it has the favor of its Living Head. Through 
fifty years this Church has had a visible suc- 
cession, and shall have, through three times 
fifty years to come, if proving loyal to the 



160 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

highest truth, and needful to the glory of its 
Lord. 

In the half century now completed, this 
Church has had the oversight of four Presby- 
teries, each a constituent of the General As- 
sembly of the Presbyterian Church in the 
United States of America, namely, the Phila- 
delphia Presbytery ; the Philadelphia Second, 
commonly designated the Assembly's Second; 
the Philadelphia Third, the same substan- 
tially as the Assembly's Second ; and the 
Philadelphia Fourth. With the Philadelphia 
Presbytery it was connected from its organi- 
zation in 1814 to the year 1832; with the 
Philadelphia Second, from 1832 to 1836; with 
the Philadelphia Third, from 1836 to 1851; 
with the Philadelphia Fourth, from 1851 to 
this present time. 

All acquainted, however slightly, with eccle- 



THE LANDSCAPE'S EYE. 161 

siastical conflicts and changes in this City, 
recognize in these Presbyterial connections 
the outline of that painful story, which tells 
the cleaving in twain of the great Presbyte- 
rian body, and the standing apart, to this 
day. in despite of substantial oneness in faith 
and order, of the powerful fragments. 

And now. having asked of the days that 
are past in respect to the first half century, of 
our history as a Church. I conclude all with 
some few thoughts which the inquiry has 
pressed upon me. 

1. One thought is. the power for good of 
every individual Church. 

In the pictorial language of the old He- 
brews, the word used to express a natural 
spring of living water is properly the word 
for the human eye. The idea thus enshrined 
is the beautiful one that a bubbling, ever- 

14- 



162 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST 

flowing fountain is the eye of the landscape. 
What life in such an eye ! What greenness, 
growth, grace, glory, all around it ! 

Now, this Church of the Living God, in 
sense the very grandest, has been the land- 
scape's eye. Think of the death and dark- 
ness which once reigned throughout the 
Liberties ! Think of the life and light which 
from this Church, as from an ever-welling 
spring, have steadily flowed ! What the pro- 
phet saw as shadowy vision, we see as sub- 
stantial fact : "In the wilderness have waters 
broken out, and streams in the desert; the 
parched ground has become a pool, and the 
thirsty land springs of water." 

2. But another thought, which inquiry of 
the past has brought home to me with force, 
is the responsibility to God and men of every 
individual member of a Church. 

When we speak of forty prayer-meetings, 



RESPONSIBILITY OF INDIVID UALS. 1 63 

and of twenty-three Sunday-schools, sustained 
by this Church, at various times, in fifty years, 
we simply say that very many of the twenty- 
five hundred members whose names have, first 
and last, been placed upon our Church-roll, 
owned and obeyed the promptings of a real- 
ized, individual responsibility. Not else could 
such results have been achieved. Those coral 
islands which insects build, depend not more 
on the " industry of every tiny worker, than 
meetings for worship, and schools for instruc- 
tion, on the fidelity of every individual helper 
in them. 

Now, in strict proportion to the value, tem- 
poral and spiritual, of religious meetings and 
Sunday-schools, is the responsibility to God 
and men of individual Church-members. In 
the light of our history we cannot but see 
clearly what vast responsibilities rested on 
such faithful workers in the Eldership as 



164 the days that are past. 

Joseph Abbott, Robert Sawyer, Isaac Will, 
and Charles Deal, and on such equally faith- 
ful workers in the membership as Cyrus Dan- 
forth and Margaret Reynolds, James Todd 
and Sarah Keim, Haryey Hand and Mary 
Stuart Dayis, all now upon our roll of honored 
dead. 

But certainly we cannot fail to see in the 
light of this same history, that responsibilities 
not less vast, rested on all who, with abili- 
ties coextensive with those of the worthies 
whom we honor, fell short in diligence and 
duty. The good not accomplished by pro- 
fessed workers in the Masters vineyard, is 
quite as real a measure of individual responsi- 
bility as that which has been. 

brethren ! what need for us to lay all this 
to heart! We are now in the place of hun- 
dreds who have gone before us. From them 
all; from faithful and unfaithful ones alike; 



SHORTNESS OF LIFE'S WORKING TERM. 165 

we catch the echoes of Christ's word to each 
of us: Be thou faithful unto death. 

3. But still another thought, which inquiry 
of the past has made to me overwhelmingly 
impressive, is the shortness of life's working 
term. 

As I have read the manuscript records of 
the Church and Congregation, following cha- 
racters traced by hands long mouldered into 
dust, I have had a buried generation round 
me. Now the penmanship is that of the 
first pastor of this Church, and now of the 
third. Now the scribe brought vividly before 
me is William Porter, a secretary of the 
Board of Trustees, whom I never saw; and 
now he is Edward F. Watson, a secretary of 
this same Board, whom, ten years ago, I 
buried. Now, page after page, is the work of 
that faithful Sunday-school teacher and super- 
intendent, Oren Hyde; and now r a massive 



166 THE DAYS THAT ARE PAST. 

volume is the ten years' work of that equally 
faithful Sunday-school teacher and superin- 
tendent, John M. Lindsay. 

In literal sense, I have " entered into their 
labors/' but the laborers — where are they ? 
From pulpit and from pew, I hear their voices 
whispering, "One generation passeth away, 
and another generation cometh." Short, in- 
deed, was the term of their working time, and 
ours, brethren, will be as short! 

Then, let us work while it is day ; let us 
do with our might what our hands find to do. 
" They that be wise shall shine as the bright- 
ness of the firmament ; and they that turn 
many to righteousness, as the stars forever 
and ever." 

The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ, and 
the love of god, and the communion of the 
Holy Ghost be with you all. Amen. 



APPENDIX. 



i. 

CHARTER OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
IN THE NORTHERN LIBERTIES. 



CHABTEB. 

The Commonwealth of Pennsylvania, 

To all to whom these presents shall come, greeting : 
Whereas Providence has been pleased to cast the 
lot of the persons whose names are hereunto sub- 
scribed, in this highly favored country of civil and 
religious liberty, where every person may worship 
Almighty Grod agreeably to the dictates of his con- 
science ) and whereas the subscribers, citizens of the 
State of Pennsylvania, and worshippers in the Pres- 
byterian Church, at the corner of Second and Coates 
Streets, in the township of the Northern Liberties, 
and county of Philadelphia, lately collegiate with 
the Second Presbyterian Church, in the city of 
Philadelphia, have, by and with the consent of the 
Trustees and people of said Second Presbyterian 



168 



APPENDIX. 



Church, in the city of Philadelphia, and sanctioned 
by an unanimous resolution of the Presbytery of 
Philadelphia, belonging to the General Assembly of 
the Presbyterian Church in the United States of 
America, convened at Philadelphia on the twentieth 
day of April, A. D. 1813, agreed to form the people 
worshipping in the building erected in the Northern 
Liberties, into a Church distinct and separate from 
the Second Presbyterian Church in Philadelphia, to 
be styled " The First Presbyterian Church in the 
Northern Liberties," to remain under the care and 
government of the said Presbytery of Philadelphia : 

Now know ye, that the said persons whose names 
are hereunto subscribed, citizens of the said Com- 
monwealth of Pennsylvania, having associated them- 
selves for the purpose of worshipping Almighty 
God, and being desirous of acquiring and enjoying 
the powers and immunities of a corporation and 
body politic in law, it is hereby declared : 

Section 1. That the said subscribers and their suc- 
cessors, being citizens as aforesaid, be, and they are 
hereby constituted and declared to be one body, 
politic and corporate in law, by the name, style, and 
title of the " First Presbyterian Church in the North- 
ern Liberties," to have perpetual succession, and to 
be able to sue and be sued, to plead and to be im- 
pleaded in all courts of record, and to receive, pur- 
chase, hold, and enjoy, to them and their successors, 
lands, tenements and hereditaments, goods and chat- 
tels, of whatever nature, kind, or quality, real, person- 
al, or mixed ; and the same from time to time to sell, 



APPENDIX. 



169 



grant, demise, or dispose of. according to the objects, 
articles, and conditions of this instrument, and ac- 
cording to the by-laws of the corporation, or the will 
and intentions of the donors : and to make. have, 
and use a common seal, and the same to break, alter, 
and renew at their pleasure, and also to ordain, esta- 
blish, and put in execution such by-laws, ordinances, 
and regulations as shall be needful for the good 
government and support of the affairs of the said 
corporation, not being contrary to the laws and con- 
stitution of the United States, or of this State, or to 
the articles and provisions of this instrument of 
incorporation ; and generally to do all and singular 
the matter and thing which to them shall appertain 
as a body corporate in law : provided always, that 
the clear yearly value, income, interest, or dividend 
of the messuages, lands, real estate, hereditaments, 
moneys, stock, goods, or chattels of the said corpora- 
tion, shall not exceed the sum of live hundred pounds. 

Section 2. That the affairs of this corporation 
shall be managed by fifteen Trustees, to be chosen by 
ballot, at such times and in such a manner and form 
as is hereafter directed ; provided, that the persons 
who have been already chosen as Trustees, viz.. Jo- 
seph Grice. John Gourley. Eobert Wallace. Joseph 
Abbott. Andrew Manderson. Joseph Weatherby. 
Branch Green. William White. John M. Hood. John 
Baker. John Shaw. Samuel Macferran, George Ben- 
ner. Beujamin Xaglee. and Samuel Grice. shall con- 
tinue to be Trustees of this corporation, until others 



170 



APPENDIX. 



shall be chosen to succeed them, according to the 
provisions of this instrument. 

Section 3. That of the aforesaid Trustees, Joseph 
Grice, John Gourley, Bobert Wallace, Joseph Abbott, 
and Andrew Manderson, shall continue to serve until 
the first Monday in December, in the year of our 
Lord one thousand eight hundred and fourteen, and 
until others are chosen in their stead; that Joseph 
Weatherby, Branch Green, William White, John M. 
Hood, and John Baker, shall continue to serve until 
the first Monday in December, in the year of our 
Lord one thousand eight hundred and fifteen, and 
until others are chosen in their stead; that John 
Shaw, Samuel Macferran, George Benner, Benjamin 
Naglee, and Samuel Grice, shall continue to serve 
until the first Monday in December, in the year of 
our Lord one thousand eight hundred and sixteen, 
and untilothers are chosen in their stead. 

Section 4. That on the first Monday in December, 
of every year, the Congregation shall meet, public 
notice having been given from the Clerk's desk the 
Sunday preceding, for the purpose of electing, by 
ballot, five persons to supply the places of those 
Trustees whose time of service shall have expired at 
that period ; and the vacancies may be supplied by 
a re-election of the same persons, or of others, as may 
seem good to the Congregation, and if by accident 
an election shall not be held for the purpose afore- 
said, within one month after public notice having 
been given as above stated : provided, those Trus- 
tees whose time of service expires shall continue to 



APPENDIX. 



171 



serve until such election. Yacancies by death, remo- 
val, or resignation of any of the Trustees, may be 
supplied by a special meeting held for that purpose, 
after public notice to the Congregation. 

Section 5. No person shall be eligible to the office 
of Trustee, or capable of voting for Trustees, except 
such as contribute to the support of the Minister, to 
the Burial-ground, and to the funds of the Church 
generally, and who shall hold a pew, or part of a 
pew, in the aforesaid Church, in payment not less 
than one dollar and twenty-five cents annually, and 
shall not be in arrears for pew rent more than one 
year at the time of election. 

Section 6. That the Trustees shall meet within 
three days after the election on the first Monday in 
December of every year, and select by ballot from 
among themselves, a President, Secretary, and Trea- 
surer, and it shall be in the power of the Trustees to 
remove all or any of the aforesaid officers, whenever 
in their opinion the good of the Congregation re- 
quires. The Treasurer shall receive and account for 
all moneys coming to his hands belonging to the 
Church ; shall give ample security on his accepting 
the office; and shall have his accounts settled an- 
nually, to be laid before the Congregation at their 
annual election for Trustees. 

Section 7. That a majority of the Trustees shall 
form a quorum to transact all business ; they shall 
keep fair records of their proceedings ; their power 
shall extend to letting or renting pews, collecting 
pew rents, and dues of the corporation; keeping the 



172 



APPENDIX. 



house in repair; paying the interest and debts of the 
corporation ; choosing a Clerk and Sexton, with full 
powers to dismiss both or either of them, and choose 
others, whenever it shall seem good; collecting and 
paying the salaries of the Minister, Clerk, and Sex- 
ton : provided, that the said Trustees shall have no 
power to sell, alienate, or dispose of the property, or 
expend the funds of the Congregation for any pur- 
pose whatever (except the salaries of Minister, Clerk, 
and Sexton) beyond the sum of three hundred dol- 
lars per annum, without the consent of a majority of 
a congregational meeting, convened for the purpose 
after due notification. 

Section 8. Whenever a special meeting of the 
Congregation shall be deemed necessary by a majo- 
rity of the Trustees, it shall be their duty to call the 
Congregation together, by giving notice in the usual 
form, at least three days previous to the meeting, 
stating the time when, the place where, and the 
purpose for which the meeting is to be held. 

(Here follow the signatures of the subscribers to the foregoing 
instrument.) 

I certify that I have perused and examined the 
foregoing instrument, and am of opinion that the ob- 
jects, articles, and conditions, therein set forth and 
contained, are lawful. 

Jared Ingersoll, 

December 14th, 1813. Attorney-General. 



APPEXDIX. 



173 



We. the Justices of the Supreme Court of the Com- 
monwealth of Pennsylvania, hereby certify that we 
have carefully examined the foregoing instrument of 
writing, and concur in opinion with the Attorney- 
General, that the objects, articles, and conditions, 
therein set forth and contained, are lawful. 

Witness our hands, this sixteenth day of Decem- 
ber, in the year one thousand eight hundred and 
thirteen. 

WmLIAM TlLGHMAX. 

J. Yeates. 

Hugh P. Brackexridge. 

Pennsylvania, ss. 
In the name, and by the authority, of the Common- 
wealth of Pennsylvania, 
Simon Snyder. Governor of the said Commonwealth. 

to Nathaniel B. Boileau. Esq.. Secretary of the said 

Commonwealth, sends greeting : 

Whereas it has been duly certified to me 
[seal.] by Jared Ingersoll. Attorney-General of the 
said Commonwealth, and by William Tilgh- 
man. Esq.. Chief Justice. Jasper Yeates. and Hugh 
P. Brackenridge. Esqrs.. Associate Judges of the Su- 
preme Court of Pennsylvania, that they have re- 
spectively perused and examined the annexed act. 
or instrument for the incorporation of the -First 
Presbyterian Cliurch in the Northern Liberties" and 
that they concur in opinion that the objects, articles, 
and conditions, therein set forth and contained, are 
lawful : 

ZSow know you, that in pursuance of an act of the 

15* 



174 



APPENDIX. 



General Assembly, passed the sixth day of April, 
in the year of our Lord one thousand seven hun- 
dred and ninety-one, entitled " An act to confer 
on certain associations of the citizens of this Com- 
monwealth, the powers and immunities of corpora- 
tions, or bodies politic in law T ," I have transmitted the 
said act, or instrument of incorporation, unto you, 
the said Nathaniel B. Boileau, Esq., Secretary as afore- 
said, hereby requiring you to enrol the same at the 
expense of the applicants; to the intent, that accord- 
ing to the objects, articles, and conditions, therein 
set forth and contained, the parties may become and 
be a corporation, and body politic in law and in fact, 
to have continuance by the name, style, and title, in 
the said instrument provided and declared. 

Given under my hand, and the great seal of the 
State, at Harrisburg, the fifth day of January, one 
thousand eight hundred and fourteen, and of the 
Commonwealth, the thirty- eighth. 
By the Governor. 

JST. B. Boileau, 

Secretary. 

X. B. Boileau, 

Secretary. 

Secretary's Office, Harrisburg, January 
[seal.] 6th, 1814. Enrolled in the office of the Se- 
cretary of the Commonwealth, in book JSTo. 
1, page 315, &c. &c, containing a record of sundry 
incorporations of religious, charitable, and literary 
societies. Witness my hand, and the lesser seal of 
the State, at Harrisburg aforesaid, the day and year 
aforesaid. 



APPEXDIX. 



175 



II. 

TRUSTEES OF THE FIRST PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH 
IJST THE NORTHERN LIBERTIES. 

The corporate number of Trustees is fifteen, di- 
vided into three classes, which serve one. two, and 
three years respectively. Of the Trustees in the 
following list, many were re-elected at various times, 
but their names appear but once in connection with 
the first year of their election. The time of annual 
election is the first Monday in December. Presi- 
dents of the Board are designated by small capitals. 



TRUSTEES. 

Joseph G-rice. 
John Gourley, 
Robert Wallace. 
Joseph Abbott, 
Andrew Manderson 
Joseph Weatherby, 
Branch Green. 
"William White. 
Johx M. Hood. 
John Baker, 
Johx Shaw. . 
Samuel Macferran, 
G-eorge Benner, 
Benjamin Xaglee, 
Samuel Grice, . 
John Xaglee. . 
John Brown, . 
Robert Brooke. . 



APPENDIX. 



TRUSTEES. 

Kees Morris, 
Thomas White, 
Andrew Wray, 
Charles Dingey, 
Francis Markoe, 
"William A. Stokes, 
Samuel S. Barry, 
Joseph Pond, . 
Isaac Will, 
Charles Anderson, 
Charles Elliott, 
William Porter, 
William Simons, 
John Doughty, 
Cyrus Danforth, 
William Bruner, 
Leonard Jewell, 
William Heiss, 
J. George Flegel, 
Adam H. Hinkel, 
George Shade, . 
John Dickerson, 
Henry Close, 
John Hocker, . 
George Cragg, . 
Jacob W. Smith, 
Hugh S. Magee, 
John Keim, 
E. N". Bridges, 
Joseph Ketler, 
George Wilson, 
Horatio Sansbury, M.D.. 
James Patterson, 
James Pussell, 
Joseph Naglee, 



YEAR OF ELECTION. 

1814. 
1815. 



1816. 



1817. 

a 
i i 
i i 

1818. 

66 

1819. 
1820. 
1821. 

66 

1823. 



1824. 
1825. 



1826. 



1828. 



APPENDIX. 



177 



TRUSTEES. 

John Moore, 
Isaac Wright, . 
Matthew Walker, . * 
Andrew Pexton, . 
James Donnelly, 
"William Heaton, 
Jacob Stout, 
Thomas Wilson, M.D., 
William P. Aitken, 
Smith Law, 
Andrew D. Caldwell, 
Seth Collom, . 
Jacob Painter, 
William Piss, . 
Lemuel P. Burton, . 
M. M. Levis, M.D., 
Samuel Kirkpatrick, 
H. Kellogg, . 
Ezekiel B. Poster, . 
James Hunt, . 
Henry Young, 
William Soby, 
Thomas B. Smith, . 
James Todd, . 
William W. Perrine, M 
Nicholas Helverson, 
Stilwell Eldredge, . 
Nicholas B. L^nruh, 
Anthony M. Warthman 
Henry Bellerjeau, . 
Benjamin Schlatter, 
William Stratton, . 
James White, . 
Anthony Green, 
John M. Test, . 



YEAR OF ELECTION 

1828. 



1829. 



1830. 
1831. 

a 
i i 
a 

1832. 



1833. 
1834. 



1835. 

1836. 
1837. 



1838. 

a 

1839. 
1840. 



1841. 



178 



APPENDIX. 



TRUSTEES. 

Haeyey Hand, 
James S. Smith, 
J enkin P. Tutton, 
John M. Lindsay, 
Thomas Leitch, 
Alexander W. Hall, 
Martin Bellows, 
James G-ay, 
Robert Haig, 
James T. Brodie, 
Edward E. "Watson, 
Eli H. Eldridge, 
James Mitchel, 
•Peter A. Jordan, 
"William D. Baker, 
Christian Dull, 
Edward Hobart, 
Jacob Wagner, 
Robert Lindsay, 
Jesse M. Cook, 
Simeon T. Zane, 
William S. Magee, 
Thomas Woodbury 
Enos Bartlett, . 
Henry S. Tarr, 
J. Atlee White, 
Jacob H. Ziegenfus 
Oliver A. Lindsaj^, 
Thomas Darling, M.D. 
George S. Sharp, 
William Kennedy 
Isaac D. Budd, 
William S. Black, 
Oscar Knipe, 
John S. Hoffman, 



YEAR OF ELECTION. 

1842. 



1843. 
1844. 



1845. 

1846. 
< i 

1847. 



1848. 
1849. 



1850. 

1851. 
1852. 

1853. 

1854. 



1855. 
1856. 
1857. 



I 



APPENDIX. 



179 



TRUSTEES. 

Nathaniel O. Bennett, 
Jacob T. Whilt, 
Charles Bossert, 
Joseph "W. Norbury, 
Charles H. Eldredge, 
Jonn F. Taggart, 
John T. Sawyer, 
Joseph Campbell, 
Eichard S. Cline, . 
Charles H. Davis, . 
John Philip Erwin, 
John Gay, 



YEAR OF ELECTION. 
1857. 



1858. 
1860. 



1861. 
1862. 



TBUSTEES IN OFFICE, JANUAEY, 1864. 

Thomas Woodbury, President. 

Joseph W. Norbury, Secretary. 

John Gay, Treasurer. 

"William S. Magee, Pew Agent. 

Charles H. Eldredge. 

Charles Bossert. 

Martin Bellows. 

Nathaniel 0. Bennett. 

John T. Sawyer. 

John F. Taggart. 

William Kennedy. 

Joseph Campbell. 

Eichard S. Cline. 

Oliver A. Lindsay. 

John Philip Erwin. 



180 



APPENDIX. 



III. 



NAMES OF COMMUNICANTS 

Dismissed from Philadelphia Second Presbyterian 
Church, to Constitute "The First Presbyterian 
Church in the Northern Liberties." 



Samuel Macferran, 
Joseph Abbott, 
John Gourley, 
Thomas "White, 
Peter Benner, 
Sarah Henderson, 
Susannah Lutz, 
William White, 
Sarah Crawford, 
Margaret Patterson, 
Margaret Wallace, 
Elizabeth Forsyth, 
Elizabeth Wallheimer, 
Joseph Grice, 
Mary Grice, 
Margaret Naglee, 
Ann Ford, 
Mary Eice, 
Susannah Ziegler, 
Elizabeth Ziegler, 
Catharine Dempsey, 
Catharine Hartman, 
Susannah Pollock, 
Lucretia Fry, 
Martha Craige, 
Sarah Fenton, 



Mary Green, 
Mary Macferran, 
Nancy White, 
Susannah McClurg, 
Kebecca Wilson, 
Jane White, 
Jane Campbell, Sr., 
Jane Campbell, Jr., 
Joshua Burley, 
Kebecca Burley, 
Mary Smith, 
Amey Free, 
Elizabeth Jones, 
Margaret Crawford, 
Mary Phile, 
John M. Hood, 
Francis Grice, 
Benjamin Wells, 
Elizabeth Segar, 
Mary Wells, 
William Wallace, 
Andrew Manderson, 
Elizabeth Manderson, 
Elizabeth Abbott, 
Elizabeth Gourley. 



APPENDIX. 



181 



In the above list there are but fifty-one names. 
Fifty-two persons, in November, 1813, asked to be 
dismissed, but, before the dismission, one, ILargaret 
White, had, it is supposed, deceased. On the day of 
the ordination and installation of the Session, 23d 
May, 1813, Thomas A. Starrett was admitted to 
the communion, and was reckoned with those con- 
stituting the Church. A few weeks after Mr. Pat- 
terson's installation, the following persons, in con- 
nection with the Second Church, but worshipping 
statedly at Second and Coates Streets, were added to 
the original communicants, 

Susannah Ferguson, Margaret Terapleton, 

Lydia Dusenberrv, Sarah Hamlin, 

Deborah Johnston, Elizabeth Johnston, 

John Moore, Eachel Morris, 

Sarah Moore, Mary Engle. 



IY. 



SFPERIXTEXDEXTS OF THE SUXDAT-SCHOOLS 

Established at various Times, axd sustained for 
logger or shorter periods, by members oe phila- 
DELPHIA X. L. First Church. 

The lists of Superintendents in such schools as 
were controlled by the Union Sabbath-school As- 
sociation, whose records from February, 1820, are 
the only records now accessible, show the names in 
the order of their first election, regardless of subse- 
quent elections, or of repeated transfers from one 
school to another. As some of these earlier schools 

16 



182 



APPENDIX. 



had male and female departments, with correspond- 
ent superintendents, their lists, for a limited period, 
show names that were contemporaneous. 

Of the schools that were under the care of the 
Combined Association, and of those begun by indi- 
viduals acting independently, no accurate lists can 
be given. The lists as given are entirely from recol- 
lection, and cannot claim to be full. 



I. 



Coates Street School, IT. S. S. A. 

Designated thus from its establishment in 1815 to 
its removal in 1833 to the new Church edifice, when 
it was named Buttonwood Street School. 



PRINCIPAL. 

Margaret Beynolds, 
Cyrus Danforth, 
Martha Agnew, 
T. E. M. Anderson, 
"William Cunningham, 
William P. Aitken, 
Benjamin Naglee, 
Joseph Naglee. 



ASSISTANT. 



Maria Morgan. 



Buttonwood Street School, .II. S. S. A. 

At the removal from Coates Street to Buttonwood 
Street, William P. Aitken was superintendent. His 
successors were 



APPENDIX. 



183 



PRINCIPAL. ASSISTANT. 

Lemuel P. Burton, 
Samuel Kirkpatrick, 
James Hunt, 
James Todd, 

John M. Lindsay, James S. Smith, 

James S. Smith, Thomas Leitch, 

Anthony M. Warthman, Nicholas B. Unruh, 

Peter A. Jordan, 
Henry Bellerjeau, 
Horatio B. Lincoln. 

Of the above list, Anthony 51. Warthman and Ho- 
ratio B. Lincoln are the superintendents at the pre- 
sent time. 

ii. 

Spring Garden School, U. S. S. A. 

PRINCIPAL. ASSISTANT. 

Oren Hyde, 
Margaret Wolbert, 
Joseph N"aglee, 

William Soby, Simeon T. Zane. 

Of the above list, William Soby was superintend- 
ent, by successive election, from 1825 to 1851, a period 
of more than a quarter century. 

in. 

Cohocksink School, U. S. S. A. 

PRINCIPAL. 

Edward Reynolds, Robert Adair, 

. Jacob Stout, William Erhardt, 

William Cunningham, William Mulison, 

John M. Test, Thomas P. Aitken, 

Thomas Wilson. 



184 



APPENDIX. 



IV. 



Kensington School, TJ. S. S. A. 



PRINCIPAL. 

Eliza Souder, 
Maria Morgan, 
Ephraim Crowell, 
Elizabeth B. Smith, 
Elizabeth White, 
John M. Test, 
Thomas P. Aitken, 
David B. Ayres, 
William E. Cornwell, 
Jacob Stout, 
Harvey Hand, 
William Stratton, 
James S. Smith, 
Jacob H. Ziegenfus, 
Henry C. Sheppard, 



ASSISTANT. 



Anthony M. Warthman, 
Thomas Leitch, 
Christian Dull, 
Daniel M. Price, 
Enos Bartlett, 
Charles D. Shaw, 
Henry C. Sheppard. 



V. 

Colored School, U. S. S. A. 

PRINCIPAL. 

Joseph Naglee, William P. Aitken, 

Oren Hyde, William Mulison, 

William Heaton, John Erhardt. 

VI. 

Nazarene School, U. S. S. A. 

PRINCIPAL. 

William Erhardt, Joseph Naglee, 

Joseph Aitken. 



APPEXDIX. 



185 



VII. 

First Combined School, Second Street and Ger- 
mantown Eoad. 

Superintendents not known. 

vm. 

Second Combined School, in third story of Lecture- 
Kooni on Coates Street. 

PRINCIPAL. 

Charles Bender, George Warner, 

Samuel Kirkpatrick. 

IX. 

Third Combined School, in Ulrick's Alley. 

PRINCIPAL. 

Philip Hess, Charles Bender. 

X. 

Fourth Combined School, in Hope Street. 

PRINCIPAL. 

William E. Cornwell, Andrew Caldwell. 

XI. 

Barton School. 

PRINCIPAL. 

Maria Morgan. 



APPENDIX. 



XII. 

Hart Lane School. 

PRINCIPAL. 

Anthony M. Warthman, James McMullin, 
John Cassner. 

XIII. 

Eising Sun School. 

PRINCIPAL. 

Adam H. Hinkel, Samuel P. Shoch. 

XIV. 

Eace Street School. 

PRINCIPAL. 

Ledden Davis. 
XV. 

Eastburn School. 

PRINCIPAL. 

Seth Collom, Charles C. Aitken. 

XVI. 

Kirke White School. 



PRINCIPAL. 

Thomas Brainerd, Matthew Walker, 

Samuel Kirkpatrick, Charles C. Aitken. 



APPENDIX. 



187 



XVII. 

Infant School, U. S. S. A. 

PRINCIPAL. 

Mrs. Eev. James Patterson, ]Miss Caroline K. Elmes, 
Miss Mary C. Patterson, Mrs. Julia Hall, 
Miss Julia Patterson, Miss Emma H. Patterson, 

Miss Margaret Soby, Miss Sarah C. Patterson, 

Miss Mary K. Stevenson. 

Of the above list, Miss Emma H. Patterson, Miss 
Sarah C. Patterson, and Miss Mary E. Stevenson 
are, at present, the associated teachers. 

XVIII. 

Missionary School. 

PRINCIPAL. 

William S. Keim, Samuel Kirkpatrick, 

Almon Bardin. 

XIX. 

Marion School. 

PRINCIPAL. 

Thomas B. Smith, James Graham, 

Joseph Stoneman. 

At the opening of this school, 6th December, 1835, 
the following hymn, written by Thomas E. Eoss, 
was sung: 



188 



APPENDIX. 



Hymn. 

Blessed Saviour ! smfle propitious 

On this little gathering here : 
Are not groups of children precious 

When before Thee they appear ? 

Now we bring the heart-oblation, 

Humble though the off 'ring be; 
Now we make a consecration 

Of this Sunday-school to Thee. 

May we come with feelings fervent, 
While we bow before Thy throne ; 

Make each teacher here Thy servant, 
Make this Sunday-school Thine own. 

To Thy feet we come, dear Saviour, 

And we there our oif'ring lay; 
May we now obtain Thy favor ; 

For Thy blessing now we pray. 

Mr. Boss, for many years a faithful Sunday-school 
teacher, despite infirmities which many would have 
judged sufficient to exempt him, has, since the above 
notice of the Marion School was written, deceased. 
He listened to the semi-centenary discourses with 
great interest, having given the pastor much valuable 
information, but before the discourses were printed, 
he passed from the labors of earth to the rest of 
Heaven. 

xx. 

Coates Street Colored School. 

PRINCIPAL. 

David Henderson. 



APPENDIX. 



XXI. 

Union School, TJ. S. S. A. 

PRINCIPAL. 

Charles S. Kea. 
XXII. 

Penn Hose School, U. S. S. A. 

PRINCIPAL. 

William Stratton. 
XXIII. 

Briggsville School, TJ. S. S. A. 

PRINCIPAL. 

"William Hutton, Jr., Kev. Alvin H. Parker. 



190 



APPENDIX. 



w 

Eh 



W 

Q 
Ph" 

w 

Q 

M 

P3 

pp H 

GQ H 

Ph PP 

^3 

Ph |z 
fa W 

W H 
H ft 

r o 

O ^ 

m 
ft 

A 

P 

m 
ft 
O 
EH 

m 

< 
Ph 





CO 


>* 


•+=> 




da 


on 


'SO 




a 


a 


nd 


GO 


CO 


c3 


02 


m 


Xfl 




5h 




CO 




>0 


iO 


to 




t-* 


rH 




CO 


iO 


CO 


CO 


CO 


CO 


T— 1 


rH 




i>T 


co~ 




i—i 






l> 


> 


ne 



S3 



ft 
<! 





CO 


tO 




T— 1 


CO 




iO 


CO 


co 


CO 


GO 


r— I 


1— 1 








rH 























ft 




ft 






P 


"p 


ft 


o 








S3 


xn 




03 


1-3 






OQ 




53 




SH 

(S3 


p 






co 



P 5Z5 



P»5 



9 

1-5 



c3 



r3 

EH 



APPENDIX. 



191 




« 132 82 



